Internet ad spend has finally overtaken television advertising in the first half of 2009, a report from the IAB & PWC reveals. The advertising report, based on figures from the Advertising Association and WARC shows that Internet advertising is the only advertising sector to grow in the first half of 2009, reaching the grand sum of £1.75bn ad spend.

The next big question for me is – when will mobile device advertising outstrip pc’s? At AdStorm we are seeing significant growth rates in mobile device traffic to all the websites we manage – which will presumably be reflected in future advertising trends.

The half year's 4.6% growth includes PPC advertising, Banner Advertising and Online Classifieds all grouped together but sits against the backdrop of an overall 17% reduction in advertising spend.

According to Guy Phillipson, CE of the IAB, the recent recession has caused advertisers to seek out the certainty provided by Internet advertising, which is more measurable - causing the Internet to overtake TV ad spend 6 months earlier than expected.

The greater measurability of Internet advertising, individual targeting, and greater divisibility of ad impressions naturally makes it more accessible to small advertisers than other advertising media. Consequently, the more targeted conventional ad types were hit hardest with print media - including classified ads, directories and display ads suffering falls between 20% and 35% since the previous period.

But it's not all one way traffic.  These figures also conceal the fact that print advertising is still the largest sector with 29% of the total ad spend. Classified and display advertising are counted separately in these figures – unlike online, where classified advertising and display advertising are all added together.