The end of May marked a big event for Honda and Channel 4 as they placed a live tv commercial showing 19 skydivers who spelt out the letters Honda whilst parachuting. The brand was supporting their ‘Difficult is worth doing’ strapline.

Impressive as it is, it’s certainly not the first live tv commercial in the UK. Back in the early days of television, most commercials were shot and aired live.

C4 sales director Andy Barnes tells us:

“We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something ‘must see’ than to stage the first live ad event on TV. It’s about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it.”

The follow on for the campaign features skydivers over the USA’s Mojave desert, creating shapes that depict the Honda Accord’s features

Forecasters Juniper Research think that mobile tv will take the largest share of mobile ad expenditure by 2010. Total mobile adspend will pass the $1 billion mark this year and climb to almost $7.6bn by 2013.

There’s no reason to disagree. Increases in bandwidth makes the rise in revenues for mobile tv inevitable. Couple it with the unique targeting opportunities mobile has and you have a goldmine.

Before this happens, Juniper thinks idle-screen advertising will hold court, with revenues moving from $7m in 2008 to over $500m in 2013.

Report author Dr Windsor Holden tells us:

“While adspend in the mobile environment is still extremely limited when compared to the budgets allocated to media such as magazines, television, cinema and the Internet, the opportunities it offers -personalized advertising with very high response rates, delivered to a device which is always in close proximity to the individual - will make it an increasingly attractive proposition for leading brands.”

Juniper also thinks that advertisers will hold back until issues like poor inventory, reach and common metrics are addressed by operators and content providers. That may be so, but the time to experiment with this stuff is now.

A report from the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau, compiled with the help of the World Advertising Research Council and PricewaterhouseCoopers, forecasts that internet advertising revenues will overtake tv ad income sometime in 2009.

OK, it’s going to be a slightly biased report talking up the net ad industry. But even if it is slightly close to the truth it is an astonishing milestone. The revenue shift is going to come from so much tv output appearing through the web, with back catalogue material appearing in archive form that is easily searchable, coupled with increasing broadband speeds.