San Francisco, Jan 6 (IANS): A recent study by iSpot.tv on TV advertising in the US has revealed that one of the biggest tech spenders last year was Microsoft Surface brand, which was more than 4 times Apple's ad spend on the iPad.

The analytics company revealed that Microsoft spent an estimated $219.1 million on Surface ads on TV, an 18.76 per cent increase year-over-year, while Apple's ad spend on the iPad, which totalled $49.1 million in TV ads.

iPad was the product Apple pushed the most on TV last year. Apple ran only 3 ads for the year, one in only English in January and another in both English and Spanish in November, generating a total of 1.18 billion impressions.

Meanwhile, Microsoft released 23 ads spots which played over 15,000 times, generating 9.06 billion impressions.

The report also notes that much of the ad spend for these two companies, and others, was on sports during NFL Football, NBA Hockey and NHL Hockey, where the viewers are unlikely to skip or switch away from the advertisement.