August saw the release of a new forecast from OPera Media which predicted that a continuation of strong increases in online search and classifieds will see UK adspend increase by 3.3% this year.
OPera added that it expects television revenues to remain static year on year, whilst newspaper circulations will continue to drop in 2007 (see
UK Adspend To Increase By 3.3% In 2007).
The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed that the number of UK households connected to the internet grew by almost one million over the past year, reaching over 15 million (see Household Internet Connectivity Rises To Over 15 Million).
The number of homes with access to broadband internet jumped by 40% year on year to 51%, the ONS found, with homes in London and the south-west leading the way in terms of the number of homes with internet access at 69%.
A further insight into broadband Britain was given in Ofcom’s Communication Market Report 2007, which revealed that silver surfers – people aged 55+ – spend an average of 42 hours online every month, more than any other age group.
The report also said that the over 55s was the only age group to increase its average radio listening between 2002 and 2007 (up 5.5%) (see Silver Surfers Spend More Time Online Than Any Other Age Group).
At the end of the month, research from Screen Digest said that the UK is lagging behind the rest of Europe in its IPTV provision, with only one nationally available IPTV service compared to eight services in France, four major operations in Spain, two in Italy and two in Germany.
The delayed national roll-out of Tiscali TV means that fewer than one in 100 UK households will be taking IPTV by the end of the year, compared with Screen Digest’s prediction that nearly one in 25 will have it in Spain and around one in ten French households will have it by the beginning of 2008 (see UK Failing To Exploit IPTV).
Also toward the end of the month, the Internet Advertising Bureau released the results of a study which showed that two out of three UK gamers are positive about the brands they see advertised in games (see UK Gamers Positive About In-Game Ads).
Over half of the 3,500 UK gamers surveyed said that they had seen an in-game advertisement in the past 12 months, with one third saying that they would be quite or very likely to buy a product as a result of seeing in-game ads.
A separate study, carried out by Microsoft’s Massive, showed that in-game ads have a positive impact on metrics like brand familiarity, ad recall and ad rating – even increasing purchase consideration by an average of 41%.
On average, in-game ads were found to significantly impact metrics that affect marketers overall, increasing brand familiarity by 64%, brand rating by 37%, ad recall by 41%, and ad rating by 69% (see In-Game Ads Increase Purchase Consideration).
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