The Register: Online ad spend on the up-and-up

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB's) U.K. division reported that online spending grew 80 percent from 2002 to 2003. The 350 million British Pound spending was heavily weighted toward the last half of the year. According to the IAB, major spending drivers included the fact that the web surpassed radio's gross audience numbers and the discovery that the web is the second most used medium for those with access.

U.K. media sellers cautioned that the industry would need to attract brand advertisers before this trend could continue much further. NewMediaZero quoted MSN's Chris Ward as saying that "the biggest driver in online ad spend has been search, which is great, but the challenge is to get similar growth out of the branding side." AOL's director of interactive marketing agreed that the branding budgets were the "huge pot of money that we haven't been able to get our hands on."

More details are to be announced tomorrow.