Traditional promotion, for example newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, mail drops and billboard advertising are at the moment, to some extent, being swapped for online marketing methods. This is not to say that budget is no longer being spent on old style advertising, it is just no longer all being spent in this sector. TV promotion used to be in the Number One spot for the way in which advertising revenue was spent, but now Online Marketing in the UK has pushed this to Number Two and taken the Number One spot for itself.

Online marketing is a collection of different types of advertising which happen over the world wide web, but as it is a relatively new media, all forms of advertising in this way are lumped together under the umbrella of online marketing. Over time, this will most likely change, but for now figures are created in this fashion for comparison purposes.

Latest figures show £1.75bn was spent on internet advertising in the first six months of this year. This increase is about 90 times as much as was spent just over 10 years ago, when amounts were close to £20 million. Of the £1.75bn spend, a bit over 1 billion was spent on search advertising, which works out to be 60% of all money spent in online advertising.

Companies recognise that many of their potential patrons are now shopping, searching and researching on the internet, and if they want to make certain they are maintaining their customers, they need to have Search Engine Placement in order to remind searchers that they exist and why it would be a good idea to shop with them.

With this in mind, they are requesting assistance from a search engine optimization company to help them attain good search engine placement, and keep their customers loyal. They are set to pay their Search Engine Optimization Company to do this work for them, which in turn means they do not have the same amount to spend on the old fashioned methods of advertising.

There is also the realisation that TV viewers do not want their viewing to be interjected with adverts, and will often, with the introduction of Sky Plus, skip adverts as they watch previously recorded programmes. They no longer, therefore, consider this as the best way of reaching a mass audience, whereas use of search engine placement means they are dynamically marketing to the searchers who do want the services they supply.

TV is not, however, dying in the art of advertising, nor are other traditional forms, more it is a case of online marketing being a change of focus for firms who are following their clients online.