Coincidence or very clever PR? Just 3 days after Google’s 11th birthday BBC published IAB and PWC study regarding Online Advertising. Official numbers say:

Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Of Course this is not a milestone (it was expected sooner or later). The study sparkled a lot of discussion what is better TV or online. In my opinion Eggheads from both sides forgot couple of things.

Both types of advertising are fuelling each other. The truth is if not tv advertising online would be a little dwarf brother of a paper based advertising. Is enough to see how gigantic traffic is referred to your website when you have links on websites like BBC or Times online.

Of course this traffic is generated because these guys themselves in their real world publications promote online world. On the other hand we have TV people banging their heads against the wall saying that TV advertising is the best value per customer – of course they keep forgetting that you need initial £1m to start talking about putting your ad out there not even mentioning timescale for the project.

I am Glad to be in Online Marketing business. Maybe it sounds narcissistic, but online advertising is the most effective form of marketing your products if you need to be fast out there look no further. On the other hand I am a very concious how powerful Radio, TV and Paper ads can be. This is the reason we always work with PR people and our strategy contains very powerful message.

But for AdWords, Webmaster tools, GMail, AdSense, Analytics, Conversion Tracking and Google Labs inventions we should all sing:

Happy Birthday Google!