Online advertising 'overtakes TV' in the UK

[workingNOMAD]

It was only a matter of time before this was going to happen. Cannot say I feel sorry for the TV stations but it does look like they are moving more and of their content online which is good news all round.

Quite a historic day really.

I suppose TV and the Internet are slowing merging anyway.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Yes, here's the BBC report
[news.bbc.co.uk...]

[Syzygy]

I wonder if commercial stations will start to whinge in the same way the newspaper publishers have...

[creative craig]

I wonder if commercial stations will start to whinge in the same way the newspaper publishers have...

I am sure they will, as soon as they realise that they are actually losing money.

[sem4u]

I suppose TV and the Internet are slowing merging anyway.

Yes they are and you can access the web from many different devices...PCs, laptops, mobile phones, games consoles, etc.

From the BBC article:

Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

This is great news for publishers and anyone working with the web in general.

[Hugene]

Indeed, the lines between the different medias are more and more blurred: newspapers are read and TV is watched on the Web. That's a reality businesses need to understand and adopt to their advantage. This change in advertisement budget is normal.

[nomis5]

Does anyone know if it's just the UK or has this already happened in the US? It's good if the UK is leading the way for once.

[inbound]

Considering the BBC is funded through the TV Licence rather than advertising (although they do have commercial arms such as BBC Worldwide) - it's not a one-to-one comparison against the US. This would also be the case in other European countries (I think France and Scandanavian countries have even less advertising on TV, possibly none in some countries).

If the BBC had to fund itself commercially then online advertising would probably be around half of TV ads (assuming that the £3billion+ BBC gets was replaced entirely by adverts, which is very simplistic as the BBC does a lot more than TV, including a rather successful set of websites/services).

Whatever the details, it's good to see so much advertising happening in the UK.

[swa66]

FWIW: France has commercial channels just as the UK has them.

[Digmen1]

Wow, that is amazing.
Its only a few years ago that online advertising was 5%. Can it really be true ?
That's a lot of banner ads and Adwords clicks ! Considering how much a tv ad costs !

[Moncao]

I reckon it is also something to do with a) the awful ads British TV now airs; awful, b) the news programs do seem to be little puppies lately of the government to the point of boredom and tackiness (plus UK news is very UK, not very worldwide), c) the terrible new programs and d) the incessant repeats. I live outside the UK but have a Sky box but am likely to ditch it soon. What I am saying is I wonder if it is a question of switching off rather than switching over. But yes, I can go online everyday and look at 4 or 5 news sites around the globe to get a much broader and better picture.