Of all the countries in Europe, UK business spend the most on online advertising, according to new research.

ZenithOptimedia has released its Advertising Expenditure Forecast, which shows that online advertising makes up 13.5% of advertising overall in the UK. This is expected to increase to 20% by 2009.

The only other two countries to spend more than 10% of their total advertising online are Sweden and Norway.

Zenith has made several predictions about the advertising market according to the results of its research. The company says that global internet advertising expenditure will increase by more than 28% in 2007; expenditure in other media will increase less than 4%.

In addition, the analysts predict that internet advertising will overtake expenditure in outdoor advertising, and will be greater than radio advertising by 2009.

To put this spending into perspective, its useful to compare the time people spend online with the amount business spend on advertising. In the US, Japan, and the UK, consumers spent 21.9% of their time engaged in some form of media online, while advertisers spent only just over 6% of their budgets online.

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