Online ad market to pass TV this year

Posted by mobile phone:
Respected research firm Enders are predicting the UK online ad market will be £3.6bn – coming in just ahead of TV which will be £3.4bn.

They have online growing at 26% and TV declining 2.5%.

That statistic alone answers a lot of questions about the impact of the credit crisis on web startups.

Other interesting facts are that 80% of Brits watch video on the web, averaging six hours each in February, about half of which was on Youtube.

All reported in the Sunday Times. Posted from my Blackberry, so no links.

Andy Warren

The question is how much of that online ad spend goes to web startups compared to the large real estate of the major sites.

The smaller start-ups still have the opportunity to attract ad spend if they can crack the holy grail of targetted ads but they still need to make the volumes work to attract the big spenders. And they need to show high value users who respond to the ads.

Smart advertisers will see that the video on the web (Youtube) stats imply the best (and potentially cheapest) form of direct web advertising will be viral videos (www.willitblend.com being a prime example). This remains a whole tranche of web advertising that is not included in the overall spend stats of purchased media space which means that the overall online advertising market is growing even faster than reported.