Internet advertising has eclipsed television advertising in the U.K. for the first time, according to new figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers published Wednesday, which found that a record £1.75 billion ($2.8 billion) was spent online in the first half of the year. The news is a further blow for the U.K.'s struggling broadcasters, lead by ITV, which have seen advertising revenues over the year down between 15%-25%, and will likely lead to further calls for relaxing advertising restrictions on the main channels to be dropped. Of the total online spend, search advertising on such sites as Google amounted to 60% of the total, while online classified advertising totaled 22% of total spend.

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