The latest data on the UK Internet Advertising spend was published in April 2008 by the Internet Advertising Bureau. Use this research on online advertising to benchmark your investment in online media with other organisations in the UK. Find out the online advertising tactics which are most commonly used. But take care with the research methodology.

The main headline was that Internet ad spend overtook classified press ad spend following on from last year's surpassing of national newspaper advertising spend. As the chart on the right shows, Internet advertising could soon overtake direct mail and at current rates of increase will overtake TV advertising by 2010!

The other main feature of these statistics is the dominance of pay per click search marketing (sponsored links like Google AdWords) which accounts for well over half the UK ad expenditure and is much more significant than display ads.

• View UK Internet Advertising Expenditure Statistics for 2007

• View Press release summary for latest UK ad expenditure

Summary of UK Online advertising research - 2007 full year

- Display advertising spend saw a 31% year-on-year increase, whilst the core formats – banners, skyscrapers and embedded rich media including video – grew by 45% to £592 million. - Ad networks increasing in importance - the IAB say "Sales houses and networks are responsible for growing and monetising the long tail of internet sites, accounting for 40% of display advertising in 2007". - Paid search marketing grew by 39% to £1.6 billion (£1.2 billion in 2006), while its market share remained similar at 57.6% (57.8% in 2006). The reported noted there were 1.7 billion searches in the UK in January 2007 according to Forrester.

Summary of UK Online advertising research - 2006 full year

These are the headlines from the IAB Research which showed a 41% surge in online media investment.

• £2.016 billion spent on online advertising in UK, 2006

• 11.4% online share of all advertising revenues (up from 7.8% in 2005)

• Online advertising greater than national newspapers (10.9% share)

• Internet spend just over half the size of the TV advertising market, which experienced a fall of 4.7% to £3.9 billion.

• UK nearly double average global share - the Global average is currently 5.8% according to ZenithOptimedia

Online advertising formats

Formats or tactics used showed a continued dominance of paid for search

• £1.2 billion (57.8 % share) on Paid for search

• £453.7 million on display advertising (including banners, skyscrapers and online sponsorships)

• £379 million (18.8% share)

Note on advertising research methodology

The figures are from the bi-annual online advertising spend study by the IAB, carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC). The data collection methodology is sound, but not inclusive – it is a survey of just 102 media owning organisations including the main media owners and the search networks. There is no adjustment according to non-participants. As more participants are included then spend figures will naturally increase and the IAB admit it is probably an underestimate.

I believe these statistics understimate the importance of digital media in promoting companies since they do not include:

• Search engine optimisation (SEO)

• Affiliate marketing

• Online PR

• Email marketing to house lists and some list rental

This is understandable since they are not media buys and it would be difficult to assess investment in these media, however, investment in SEO and affiliate marketing is often allocated from a traditional advertising budget and the sums are significant.