This is the way it’s going. Good story by Reuters on the pressures television is having to face in order to remain competitive. With more and more people going online, television will need to adapt, and integrate, or die.

“We believe the Web site will ultimately replace the 30-second commercial as the central expression of the brand … The TV commercial over time will become more of a way to simply send people to your Web site,” said Brian McAndrews, chief executive of Internet marketing company aQuantive Inc..

Television accounts for roughly two-thirds of major companies’ advertising budgets, and that could shrink to about one-half in three years, according to David Verklin, chief executive of online media buying company Carat Americas, a unit of Aegis Group Plc.

A main driver of that change will be online advertising, he said, which should see its share of spending roughly double from about 8 percent now, as companies pay more attention to the Web’s ability to tailor messages to individual consumers and to track response.

Web video advertisements will be about 10 seconds long, and mobile advertising on cell phones and other devices would be a similar length, he projected.

Verklin, like a number of executives, predicted that television would begin to look like the Internet, perhaps adding clickable Web sites in place of commercials. The element of interaction could increase the older medium’s ability to reach smaller, self-selecting groups of clients, he added.

Let’s hope advertisers do better this time, and don’t over saturate. Permission marketing must be the way corporations operate, or a version of it, in order to execute sustainable advertising.