The past few weeks have seen a number of significant indications of the new and growing importance of online advertising. New research from the Internet Advertising Bureau revealed that the money spent on UK internet advertising last year topped 10% of the total advertising spend across all media for the first time, with a figure of around £2bn in total expenditure.
There have also been a number of record-breaking acquisitions in the sector. Google agreed to buy DoubleClick, one of the leaders in distributed digital advertising, earlier this year for $3.1bn (£1.6bn); WPP agreed to buy 24/7 RealMedia, another digital tech and advertising business, for $650m (£329m); and then, just a day later, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Aquantive for $6bn (£3bn).
