Member Article

Internet advertising approaches £1bn

Online advertising spending in Britain jumped to nearly £1bn in the first half of 2006 compared with a year ago, the latest figures show.

The research, carried out by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), revealed that the use of advertising on the internet has grown by 40% to £917m, taking a market share of 10.5%. The IAB said internet advertising spend had continued to grow despite an overall market depression and predicted it would overtake spending on national press advertising before the end of 2006.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, said “this has been a very tough market, marked in most media by loss of confidence and declining advertising expenditure. “In this environment, it’s encouraging to see the internet turning over nearly half a billion pounds a quarter - showing healthy growth from an already high base.”

According to the study carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the IAB, the internet is the fastest-growing advertising medium in the UK, commanding a market share of 10.5% for January to June 2006, up from 7.3% for the same period in 2005. The IAB reports shows that this took online advertising to within one percentage point of the share recorded by the national press.

Paul Pilkington, Director of Entertainment and Media practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that the internet had a wide array of benefits over other forms of advertising, and “it is hardly surprising that internet advertising revenues have continued to grow. The medium is fast becoming part of the mainstream advertising mix.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .