Britons are spending more time on the internet every day than ever before, a new report has revealed.

Published by communications sector regulator Ofcom, the study indicated that UK web users spent an average of 24 minutes online each day last year.

This is compared with the average figure of six minutes per day recorded by Ofcom in 2005.

The research also showed that UK consumers are spending less on their broadband connections while surfing the web for longer each day and pointed to the growing popularity of converged services such as internet radio.

In addition, Ofcom provided statistics on the state of the British internet advertising industry, showing that spending on the medium rose by almost 40 per cent last year to reach £2.8 billion.

Paid search campaigns to achieve a high website ranking were found to attract the greatest share of this expenditure, with classified and display ads also seeing significant investment last year.

Research firm IDC also recently pointed to the growing shift towards the online medium, predicting in a report that about 30 per cent of the world's population will have regular access to the web by 2012.