Web advertising now accounts for almost 24% of ad spending in the U.K., compared to TV, which has a 22% share. These figures come from a biannual report from Internet Advertising Bureau in the U.K. and were first reported by Reuters.

But before you get too excited, consider that the U.K. TV market is a highly restricted one with a massive player that doesn't take ads (BBC) and one that's been particularly battered during the recession. On top of that, online spending in the U.K. has been anything but immune to the recession, with its torrid rates of growth seen as recently as early 2008 falling off dramatically.

The new order is helped by the abundance of cheap computing technology and high broadband penetration in the U.K. And it doesn't particularly come as a surprise when you consider that the TV market is so beat up that advertisers are increasingly hanging their hopes on a relaxation of rules barring product placement in programming.

Internet advertising's fortunes are also helped by recession-mired marketers looking for more efficient, more measureable ways to spend their dollars, which the Internet provides. Even still, web advertising, which grew a little more than 4% over the first half of 2009 -- the time period measured in the IAB report -- is way off the 21% growth over the same period in 2008.

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