In what some may regard as the final nail in the commercial TV networks’ coffins it was announced this week that online ad spend is higher than TV expenditure for the first time ever. Figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed online advertising grew by 4.6% to £1.75bn in the first half of 2009.
The impressive figures come despite a plummet for the advertising industry as a whole which saw its revenue drop by 16.6% during the same period, making online the biggest UK advertising medium.
Explaining Google’s unwavering reign, the IAB figures also revealed search advertising has continued to grow steadily, and currently hogs nearly 60% of all online advertising expenditure.
It’s a trend that we’ve been heading towards for some years now but Eva Berg-Winters, online advertising expert, PricewaterhouseCoopers, thinks the recession may have sealed the deal. She explains: “A slowing economy has accelerated the migration to digital technology and hence the continuing shift from more traditional forms of advertising to online, which promises return on investment and measurability in a period of instability.”
But while the recession may have sped up the shift from broadcasted ads to digitally published ones, much of the growth has surely come from the accessibility that online advertising provides smaller companies. The price of a 30-second slot, even at reduced recession prices, is still well beyond the budgets of 95% of the businesses trading in the UK today.
Nick Jenkins, the founder of Moonpig.com and the man behind one of TV’s most irritating adverts of recent years, told us last week promoting his business on TV wasn’t even an option for the first seven years of the company’s existence. Before that, promotion was confined to word of mouth and highly targeted online spend.
Which begs the question, does the continued decline of TV advertising mean we can soon kiss goodbye to the classic jingle? Anyone who’s seen the current ad for WeBuyAnyCar.com can only pray…