Internet advertising in the UK grew by a massive 41.2% in 2006, smashing through the £2 billion barrier and sauntering past the amount – £1.9 billion – spent on national newspapers. These phenomenal figures, issued by the
Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), underline the seismic shift in ad spend as marketers move their budgets from more traditional media online.
'With almost all expenditure on traditional media in decline,' commented
the IAB, 'the upward momentum of the internet reflects a new era in marketing communication and consumer behaviour, which is driven by high-speed broadband take-up and user-generated content.'
In 2006, to be precise, £2.016 billion was ploughed into online advertising, taking the internet's total share of UK ad revenues from 7.8% in 2005 to 11.4%. National newspaper market share last year, in contrast, was 10.9%.
OK, the amount spent on internet advertising was only marginally more than half of what was spent on TV advertising – £3.9 billion – but TV ad revenues fell by a not insignificant 4.7%. But TV wasn't alone. Advertising across traditional UK media fell by £466.1
million in total, or 2.9%. In fact, it was only due to the huge increase in online ad
spend that the market as a whole grew by 1.1%.
So what drove the growth? Well, three things above all:
- the proliferation, or mass penetration, of broadband internet, which is now in some 10 million UK households. Oh, and the fact that 65% of the UK population is now online
- marketers themselves, who are becoming more innovative online, experimenting with much richer audio-, animation- and video-based adverts and techniques that entertain consumers or allow them to create
- the explosion in user-generated content and social networking. More than anything, these two phenomena have revolutionized the net, and attracted people in their hundreds of millions. Marketers are moving online to monetize the eyeballs
The IAB concluded: 'The internet is proving itself a hugely popular mass medium and
advertisers are continuing to switch more of their budgets online to
build their brands and interact with their customers.'
Can't argue with that. As for card marketers, and not just in the UK but globally, these figures send out a loud and clear signal — promote your plastic online because that's where people are.