The Dutch wing of consumer goods giant Unilever is to divert adspend from print media and TV to online channels in a move that will double its internet ad budget in the national market.

During the 2004 fiscal Unilever Nederland was the nation's number one advertiser with a gross spend across all media of €162 million ($209.19m; £111.56m), albeit somewhat down on 2003.

But insiders says that spend online will be hiked in 2005 to around ten per cent of the group's overall national budget, equivalent to an annual total of around €16m.

Unilever rarely takes such a marketing step in isolation, leading some observers to view the move as a pan-European testbed - although Harry Dekker, the company's media channel manager, would divulge nothing save that the move online will be at the expense of traditional fmcg media.

Data sourced from mandmeurope.com; additional content by WARC staff