Advertisers now spend more than £1 in every four on the internet, according to statistics compiled for the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) by PwC.

Driving the internet advertising boom are the retail and consumer-facing industries, which have embraced online marketing. Combined, the two sectors now account for more than one-quarter of UK internet display ads.

IAB’s director of research and strategy Tim Elkington told the Financial Times that new marketing formats, such as internet videos, are helping to push up the spend on retail display ads. The figures show online video display ads were up 10 per cent to £109 million in 2011.

Retail and consumer businesses are also using online advertising campaigns to drive up their high street footfall, Mr Elkington said.

“Online display advertising is becoming more attractive to consumer-facing businesses, and it is the retail and consumer advertisers who are increasing their ad spend budgets the most," he explained.

Advertising on social media sites such as Facebook rose by almost 75 per cent last year, slowing from the bumper 200 per cent growth levels recorded in 2010. Spending on banner display ads on social media sites went up 21 per cent year on year to £240 million in 2011.

Advertising through search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing grew by 17.5 per cent to £2.77 billion, and remains the most popular form of online marketing.

A report by advertising research group Warc due to be released next week is expected to show that UK online ad spending overtook the amount spent on press ads in 2011.

As part of a wide-ranging study by media management company Red Bee Media, broadcasting executives were quizzed on their predictions for business models and revenue streams in 2020.

The Tomorrow Calling survey suggests a rosy future for the industry, with more than three-quarters (78 per cent) of respondents saying they felt the financial outlook was positive, with growth in both traditional TV and online video revenues. But it revealed a particularly bullish attitude towards online video as TV bosses expect ad revenues to rise 320 per cent in a decade.

Ad revenues will be boosted by a “content gold rush” by 2020 as traditional broadcasters compete with internet and technology companies for premium film and sports rights, the executives believe. Nearly three-fifths (57 per cent) think a tech giant such as Google, Apple or Samsung, will acquire a package of live rights to Premiership football. Just under half (46 per cent) predict YouTube will invest over £100 million on commissioning original video in the UK by 2020 and 59 per cent expect Sky to spend more on TV production in the UK than ITV.

However, two thirds believe that the growing influence of digital gatekeepers such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook will be the most significant challenge facing their company.

Red Bee Media chief executive, Bill Patrizio, said media companies will have to fight hard and innovate in order to make the most of the market opportunities by 2020.

“If the last ten years have seen the convergence of broadcasting with broadband, it’s likely that the remainder of the coming decade will see a collision and competition between business models driven by consumer demand and expectation and changing patterns of media consumption,” he said.

RTB for online video has emerged as a major component of online video buys, with bid-based buying and private exchange driven deals serving as the two main buying methods, according to Forrester Consulting, which carried out its research for RTB and online video ad solutions provider SpotXchange.

The study, Online Video RTB Primed for Dramatic Growth, found that RTB in online video advertising is on track to grow from $190 million (£119.5 million) in 2011 to $387 million (£243.5 million) this year. By 2013 the market should expand again to $667 million (£419.8 million), with RTB in online video advertising accounting for 21.8 per cent of all US online video spending.

Central to this dramatic growth is the success of RTB in online display advertising, which has laid the groundwork for RTB in online video, Forrester Consulting said. Buyers familiar with RTB in online display advertising have gone on to adopt RTB for online video as they understand the technology and audience-based buying. Plus, the auction format is helping to bring together buyers and sellers who want to reach the same audience.

"We believe this study provides validation to what we already knew: that RTB will be an extremely strong force of online video spends in the coming years," commented Michael Shehan, president and CEO of SpotXchange. "We are seeing very similar percentage growth in our RTB marketplace."

RTB is the process by which advertisers assign individual value to a particular ad impression by bidding on those impressions in real time in an auction environment.

Nearly 87 per cent of US brands and agencies are including online video in their content marketing strategies this year, with many already investing heavily in digital video production, according to Outbrain, a content discovery platform that drives traffic to publisher websites through personalised recommendations.

The rise in investment in online video comes as figures from eMarketer reveal it is set to be the fastest growing advertising format in the US in 2012, with growth predicted to reach nearly 55 per cent over the year.

The next most common form of content after online videos was blog posts, which are being used by two thirds of marketers. This was followed by articles, slideshows and photo galleries, which were important to 44 per cent of respondents.

Outbrain’s research found almost all of US brand and agency marketers (96 per cent) using social media to distribute and share content such as videos, articles and blog posts. This compares with just over three-quarters of respondents who said they used paid search and display advertising (78 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively).

When measuring the success of their content marketing campaigns, the majority of Outbrain’s respondents (89 per cent) looked at the number of social media engagements and referrals. Other popular metrics used to quantify content marketing success were content views and downloads (75 per cent), number of leads (53 per cent) and search referrals (51 per cent). Only a third of respondents used direct sales as a measure of success.

Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings will integrate media planning and measurement across television and the internet. The partnership will also involve the two companies collaborating on innovative new measurement tools for other platforms.

The new service will be based on Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings product and incorporate its TV audience measurement system to provide GroupM clients with total reach and frequency information for marketing campaigns.

The move is in response to a growing demand by advertisers for cross-platform measurement tools that help them streamline their marketing strategies. Television and online video measurement traditionally employ different metrics, making calculating the total reach and frequency of a cross-platform campaign difficult.

Steve Hasker, president of Media Products and Advertiser Solutions for Nielsen, says cross-platform metrics are essential to both buyers and sellers of advertising.

"Every day, we’re hearing from advertisers, online publishers, TV networks and agencies that a better system of measurement is required," he said. "Through working closely with GroupM and others in the industry we believe we can help create best practices that will benefit the entire ecosystem."

Rino Scanzoni, GroupM’s chief investment officer, added, "Our advertiser clients increasingly recognise that traditional television advertising and online video advertising must work together. It’s vital that we have consistent measurement, and that’s our goal in working with Nielsen."

GroupM is WPP’s global media investment management leader and the parent of media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare.

Nielsen is a market-leading information and measurement company, providing marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence and mobile measurement.

The digital measurement firm's monthly video metrics highlight the growing popularity year-on-year of online video. In February, a total of 179 million Americans watched nearly 38 billion online videos – up five per cent on the same time last year. However, the latest figures also reveal just how profitable the platform is becoming, with a surge in views of online video ads.

Video ads, which are included as “content” in the data, notched up 7.5 billion views – a 49.3 per cent year-on-year increase. Ads reached almost half the US population an average of 49 times during the month and accounted for 16.6 per cent of all videos viewed and 1.3 per cent of time spent watching video online.

Offering long-form content has helped propel Hulu to the top spot for ad impressions (1.55 billion) and the highest duration of video ads (650 million minutes). Google properties ranked second for ads with 1.1 billion views, followed by Adap.tv with 705.7 million, BrightRoll Video Network with 683.4 million and Specific Media with 611 million.

Overall, Google Sites remained the most popular destination for all video content, with 147.4 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 60.8 million users, VEVO with 52 million, Facebook.com with 43.6 million and Viacom Digital with 43.2 million.

Driven primarily by YouTube traffic, Google Sites held on to a comfortable lead over rivals both in terms of unique users and time spent on the platform. But thanks to last year’s launch of the Yahoo-ABC News network, Yahoo! Sites leapfrogged VEVO and Microsoft sites to clinch second place.

Speaking at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, Jeremy Sanchez, of Ogilvy-owned enterprise search consultancy Global Strategies, and Robert Davis, executive director of Advance Video Practice at Ogilvy USA, argued that trying to make videos go viral is a “fantasy” that leads to “disappointment and disillusion”.

“Few videos ever go viral, and fewer actually need to,” they said.

Only four per cent of YouTube videos get more than 100,000 views, making it an extremely inefficient way to connect with customers. Instead of being obsessed with notching up a huge number of views, it is better to concentrate on getting the viewer to engage with the content – even if this means fewer people watch it.

In their presentation titled Viral is A Dirty Word, the pair explained that marketers should focus on optimising their video production strategy to “pull the levers that matter most”. To achieve this, Sanchez and Davis have come up with what they refer to as the five-step “anti-viral” programme, which involves: planning; creativity; optimisation; promotion; and measurement.

Although this is unlikely to result in a YouTube hit like Charlie Bit My Finger, the eyeballs that the online video attracts are likely to engage with – and ultimately buy – the client’s product or service.

Businesses should not be taken in by the "myth" that you can make a video go viral, because marketing content cannot be treated in the same way as user-generated content, Mr Sanchez said.

"The idea that I can make a video, and just because it’s good and because I put it on YouTube and tweeted about it, a million people are going to view it the next day. It doesn’t work that way," he said, adding that if Charlie Bit My Finger and other user-generated YouTube hits started with a logo, they would not have had millions of views.

The 12-minute film, titled We Are Maersk, was narrated by award-winning British actor John Hurt and directed by Danish film director and screenwriter Christoffer Boe, whose gongs include winner of the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.

Intended as a video production for online audiences, the film has its own dedicated website and is being launched across social media channels including YouTube. It shows how high quality video production – albeit on a huge budget – can help boost a company's corporate image.

It was made in conjunction with 10 shorter films, one each for six business units and another four for separate corporate themes.

Shot in 40 cities across 20 countries, the main film gives viewers an insight into some of the work performed by the 108,000 people employed by the world's biggest container shipping line on its vessels and oil rigs, and in offices and factories in 140 countries.

In a bid to create a glossy, big screen-style update of the company's image, the production team travelled the globe, from shipping terminals in Vietnam and Nigeria to busy ports such as Shanghai and Rotterdam. The footage includes Qatar's sun-drenched oil fields and raging storms at offshore oil rigs on the North Sea.

The film also includes interviews with Maersk employees such as Vincent Clerc, a senior executive from Maersk Line, Nguyen Thi Minh, Ngoc, human resources manager at Cai Mep International Terminal in Vietnam, Ben Pomford, a senior toolpusher with Maersk Drilling, and Mariann Richterhausen, a Maersk Oil well site geologist.

“The basic principle is that people can trust us,” former group chairman Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller says to camera at the end of the film.

Those watching online video in January represented 80 per cent of the total UK internet audience. It is worth highlighting that while the UK’s online video audience did not get any bigger in the past six months, the number of videos viewed jumped 28 per cent and the total amount of time spent watching online video leaped 42 per cent, suggesting that viewers are becoming more engaged with video on the web over time.

Google-owned sites ranked as the most popular video destination with nearly 30 million unique users who watched 3.7 billion videos for 15.9 billion minutes. This was largely due to YouTube, which accounted for 99.5 per cent of all Google’s video views.

Vevo was in second place with 11.7 million unique viewers watching 177 million videos for a total of 820 million minutes. Facebook was third, attracting 8.3 million unique viewers who clocked up 162 million minutes on 45 million videos.

An analysis of online content video and video ad viewers showed that 64 per cent of the online video audience was exposed to a video ad in January, with the 15 to 24 age group making up the largest video ad audience in terms of both unique viewers and engagement.

Men were three times more engaged with content videos than women, representing 74.7 per cent of the time spent watching them. When it came to video ads, the gender split was more even with males accounting for 56.4 per cent of all time exposed to ads compared to 43.6 for females.

Solve Media’s concept allows consumers to skip ads and go straight to their video by typing in a slogan or phrase that tells the advertiser they have understood the company’s message.

Ari Jacoby, chief executive and co-founder of Solve Media, said this “offers consumers a reward for participating cognitively with a brand message”. Meanwhile advertisers get “pre-roll insurance” – the ability to gauge an ad’s performance, even if it flops.

The platform supports major internet publishers including AOL, whose venture capital arm AOL Ventures is an investor in Solve Media. Companies trying out the technology for their online ad video production include Toyota, General Motors and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG).

Research conducted by Solve Media and comScore found 53 per cent of respondents “zone out” during pre-roll ads, and 47 per cent open a new browser tab or window in the interim. A different study cited by Solve Media revealed that since YouTube began allowing users to skip pre-roll ads, the online video giant has seen average skip rates of around 70 per cent, and up to 80 per cent. Solve Media estimates the amount wasted on skipped or ignored video ads in the US is $33 (£20.90) per second.

Solve Media is not the first company to search for ways to improve advertising on online videos. Hulu’s Ad Swap allows users to select which companies’ advertisement they would like to watch with their videos, while AdoTube’s Polite Pre-Roll lets viewers minimise the ad and go straight to the video, with a pop-up reminding them to watch it later.