Internet advertising worth �4bn

28 March 2011 Last updated at 19:01 ET By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent, BBC News

The internet now accounts for a quarter of all advertising spending in the UK, according to figures.

Theyu show that the value of online advertising grew by 12.8% in 2010, breaking through the �4bn barrier.

A study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the accountants PwC found that online advertising spending grew three times as rapidly as in 2009.

It also outpaced the rest of the advertising market, which has recovered after dipping during the recession.

Guy Phillipson, the chief executive of the IAB, said: "Major brands restored their advertising budgets in 2010 and online was a big winner."

The biggest growth area was display advertising on social networks, which grew by nearly 200%.

Print media's pain

Facebook has made big advances in the last year in persuading advertisers to see social networks as a place to promote their wares.

With figures showing that UK internet users spend 25% of their online time on social networks, advertisers are keen to tap into this audience.

Online video advertising also nearly doubled in 2010, with �54m spent on adverts that appeared before, during or after video clips.

Mobile advertising raced ahead too, with finance, telecoms and consumer brands trying to reach audiences on the move.

Search advertising, still dominated by Google, remains the biggest earner, although growth in this more mature business was just 8%.

Ian Barber of the Advertising Association says there is one clear attraction which is boosting online spending: "It's targeted, it makes it easier for brands to work out who they're advertising to."

Other areas of advertising recovered last year, with television spending bouncing back after a steep decline.

But much of the Press is still suffering, with magazines and regional newspapers seeing revenues continue to fall. Classified advertising, once a key element in regional newspaper revenues, has now nearly all migrated online.

But Lynne Anderson of the Newspaper Society says local newspapers are capturing some of that online advertising spending on their own websites: "They are getting pretty savvy at capturing audiences in new ways."

She added: "Regional newspapers - print and online - are resilient, innovative and well-placed to benefit when wider market conditions improve."

The IAB expects online spending to continue to grow, as faster broadband makes new formats increasingly attractive.

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Twitter founder rejoins company

28 March 2011 Last updated at 18:52 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who was pushed out of the company as chief executive in 2008, is to return full time to lead product development.

He will replace fellow co-founder Evan Williams, who has stepped back from daily involvement with Twitter but will remain on the board.

The announcement was tweeted by chief executive Dick Costolo who wrote that he was "excited" by the return.

Mr Dorsey followed up the tweet, saying that he was "thrilled".

He says he intends to remain chief executive of a mobile payments service called Square, which is located near Twitter's San Francisco headquarters.

"As executive chairman, Jack will dive into work with more than 450 people, led by an experienced executive team," Twitter said in a company statement.

"The timing is fortuitous; not only is Twitter experiencing record growth, but we also now have a new infrastructure that will keep us ahead of that growth and enable us to launch products that will make Twitter more instant, simple and always present," the statement said.

The move comes at an important time for the information and communications platform.

Despite the phenomenal take up by around 200 million users, the company faces challenges ahead as it proves itself to be a profitable business.

Last week Twitter celebrated its fifth birthday.

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Hackers target business secrets

28 March 2011 Last updated at 03:01 ET

Intellectual property and business secrets are fast becoming a target for cyber thieves, a study suggests.

Compiled by security firm McAfee, the research found that some hackers are starting to specialise in data stolen from corporate networks.

McAfee said deals were being done for trade secrets, marketing plans, R&D reports and source code.

It urged companies to know who looks after their data as it moves into the cloud or third-party hosting centres.

"Cyber criminals are targeting this information based on what their clients are asking for," said Raj Sumani, chief technology officer in Europe for McAfee.

He said that some business data had always been scooped up when net thieves compromised PCs using viruses and trojans in a search for logins or credit card details.

The difference now was that there exists a ready market for the data they are finding. In some cases, said Mr Sumani, thieves were running campaigns to get at particular companies or certain types of information.

Perimeter defences

Thefts of intellectual property or key documents could be hard to detect, said Mr Sumani.

"You may not even know it's stolen because they just take a copy of it," he said.

Defending against these threats was getting harder, he said, because key workers with access to the most valuable information were out and about using mobile devices far from the defences surrounding a corporate HQ.

"Smartphones and laptops have crossed the perimeter," said Mr Sumani.

The report comes in the wake of a series of incidents which reveal how cyber criminals are branching out from their traditional territory of spam and viruses.

2010 saw the arrival of the Stuxnet virus which targeted industrial plant equipment and 2011 has been marked by targeted attacks on petrochemical firms, the London Stock Exchange, the European Commission and many others.

Mr Sumani said that, as firms start to use cloud-based services to make data easier to get at, they had to work hard to ensure they know who can see that key corporate information.

Otherwise, he warned, in the event of a breach, companies could find themselves losing the trust of customers or attracting the attention of regulators.

"You can transfer the work but you cannot transfer the liability," said Mr Sumani.

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