THE internet will surpass television this year to become Britain’s largest advertising medium, according to new research.

Enders Analysis forecasts online advertising spending will increase 26% this year to £3.56 billion. This compares with a 2.5% fall in revenue, to £3.39 billion, for television.

Thanks to the prominence of search giant Google, the internet had been expected to overhaul TV, for decades the top advertising channel, but not until next year.

“The TV market is flat at best if not weakening, whereas online advertising has continued to grow much more strongly than expected,” said Ian Maude, head of internet at Enders.

Meanwhile, audience measurement firm ComScore says that four-fifths of British web users are watching video over the internet. Between them, they watched almost six hours of online programmes each in February. That equates to 113 videos each for 26.6m users, making a total of almost 3 billion clips in all.

Almost half of those videos were on YouTube.

Deloitte’s Digital Index, which launches this week, is more conservative. It says that 19% of households regularly watch online video, up 8% from August 2007. It believes that figure could rise to more than 50% in five years’ time.

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