Figures by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers show that advertisers spent a record £1.75 billion on digital marketing in the first six months of this year, outstripping TV to become the UK biggest advertising medium.
In case you don't know, as of today the web accounts for 23.5 per cent of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV takes a 21.9 per cent share of marketing budgets.
This landmark has been a long time coming, but today was the day that David finally took off his specs, put down his MacBook, walked up to Goliath and sucker punched him right in the chops.
It goes without saying what a sea change this represents, but to put things in perspective in just six years the internet has gone from the smallest advertising medium (worth just £19.4 million) to the biggest.
In fact, when the IAB first started measuring online ad spend back in 1998 it was virtually impossible to mention ‘the internet' to marketers without getting shoed away in the direction of the IT manager.
Now, thankfully, things have changed. While still dominant, TV no longer monopolises the media schedule like it used to in the nineties, and marketers have realised that digital is a cheap and effective way of building their brand.
Of course, the swing-shift has been prompted by a fundamental change in consumer behaviour. Thanks to the rise of the internet, and media fragmentation in general, it's no longer possible for brands to reach a captive audience of eight million people during Coronation Street.
The smart money is now being invested online where consumers are watching video clips, downloading shows and consuming entire series on-demand. Media consumption habits have evolved and advertisers have cottoned on to the fact that TV, while still a marvellous medium (there you go Thinkbox), is not the be all and end all.
However, this is only just the beginning. The majority of big-name brands still devote a woefully small portion (usually between five and ten per cent) of their total media spend to the internet. And the digital industry, while becoming increasingly sophisticated, is still in its infancy.
What today's landmark does signal is the need for a fundamental structural change on the part of both advertisers and agencies. Brands need to re-engineer their marketing teams to ensure that digital is properly integrated into the media plan, while agencies need to re-focus to serve clients that no longer distinguish between traditional and digital media.
Clearly, the boundaries between the internet and TV are continually blurring so today's announcement is not a case of one medium winning out over another. However, it does point to a future where brands value ‘pull' over ‘push' advertising and two-way conversations over broadcast messages.
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