November 24, 2006	Friday	Ziqa'ad 2, 1427

LONDON, Nov 23: British firms are planning to invest more in online advertising as households increasingly use the Internet for routine purchases, a new survey said on Thursday.

Online spending on marketing will rise by 50 per cent from 2.2 billion pounds this year to 3.3 billion pounds in 2009, said the survey by the Internet search group Google and Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

The firms surveyed are likely to spend nearly 13 billion pounds in three years in Internet-based technology, up from the current level of about 10bn pounds a year.

“Six years after the dot.com bubble burst, the Internet is driving really substantial change among businesses,” Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, said in a statement.

“Firms are learning more about harnessing the Internet to benefit their staff, their customers and their future prospects,” he said, but added they still had a long way to go.

In Britain, nearly eight companies out of 10, or 77 per cent, and nearly half of all households, or 44 per cent, had broad-band Internet access in the first quarter of 2006, according to Eurostat statistics published this month.

That compares to 75 and 32 per cent respectively on average in the European Union and 86 per cent and 30 per cent in France.

Sixty per cent of British consumers believe that the Internet has given them more power and 43 per cent say that the technology is making companies more accountable.

Some 83 per cent use search engines to learn about products and services and 72 per cent say that they make choices based on the opinions of others.

Nine out of ten surveyed complain about pop-up windows.

And nearly half of British consumers, or 44 per cent, still refuse to buy on line because they cannot examine items before buying and 40 per cent because it is costly and complicated to return a product.—AFP