The growth of the internet is raising some interesting challenges for old and new media players alike, as traditional ways of doing business may not adapt to an online world.

Increasingly clients will research products and ideas online before speaking to their adviser.

This makes it imperative for advisers to keep in touch with online news and information, if they want to appear well-informed and in touch.

The growing power of the web was neatly demonstrated in a recent news item that revealed Google’s ad revenue in the UK recently overtook ITV 1, the UK’s main terrestrial commercial television channel.

Until recently, the idea of a website overtaking ITV 1 commercially would have seemed crazy.

But with internet ad spending overtaking newspaper ad spending in 2006, the rise of web 2.0 is inexorable.

Considering that sites such as Google were initially set up without ads, this shows that the internet strategy of building up traffic, before finding a way of making money from it, has its benefits.

In contrast, subscription-only sites, such as ft.com, the online version of the Financial Times, are moving away from a pay for access model for raising revenue.

One internet site, or range of sites, with plenty of traffic but little or no revenue as yet is the BBC.

However, a representative of the BBC business news site recently told CoreData Research UK that it is now averaging around a million hits a day on its news pages.

This figure jumped significantly with the recent run on the Northern Rock bank, as users sought reliable and impartial information.

For an organisation like the BBC, which faces serious pressure on its budgets and which has a huge web presence, the idea of making money from the internet has an irresistible logic.

So, CoreData understands, the BBC is planning to include ads on its sites, with certain conditions.

One of these is that the ads are only seen by non-UK users, as UK users already pay a licence fee to fund the BBC.

Another condition will be that the ads are tasteful and decent, in keeping with the public service ethos of the Beeb, and that they don’t clash with the editorial content of the sites.

Even so, this move is a sign of the times for the BBC and it could give it a way of building a new source of funding.

From a financial point of view, events such as this show that the internet is a force that advisers and providers cannot ignore.

In the old days, commuting City workers carried a quality newspaper to read.

Some still do, but podcasts on ipods and news feeds on smart phones, as well as access to 24-hour news sites are increasingly the order of the day.