We all know that online advertising expenditures are, overall, on the rise.  And according to reports from the BBC, our friends in the UK are actually spending more for online advertising than they are for traditional newspaper advertising.

In a report released by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online ad spending in the UK grew 41.2% in 2006 to top out at £2.01bn.  For the first time ever, online ad spend bested the £1.9bn spent on newspaper advertising.  Television advertising still reigned supreme… but by a smaller margin that you might guess.  With £3.9bn spent on television ads, online expenditures were over halfway to catching up.

The report credits the popularity of the Internet and broadband connections with the trend:

With consumers now enjoying even faster broadband and installing wireless routers in their homes, the growth of online advertising in the UK is set to continue unabated.

While online advertising appears to be growing on a global scale, the UK far out-paces the global average by a factor of almost 2:1.