Internet advertising - including pure-play Web sites and digital extensions of traditional media - will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011, according to research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson.
According to VSS, the amount of time consumers spent looking at print media is beginning to trend downward with a 2006 drop of 0.5% compared to 2005. This was the first drop since 1997, and VSS credits changing consumer behavior and digital media efficiencies as consumer migrate to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment.
"We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies," said James Rutherfurd, Executive Vice President and Managing Director at VSS. "We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place-shifting accelerate, while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model."
"Leading national advertisers have accelerated their diversion of dollars from traditional print and broadcast media to alternative digital platforms to combat media and audience fragmentation and the growing impact of advanced technology on conventional media models. The result has been the extraordinary growth of alternative advertising and marketing," Rutherfurd said.
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