Publishers interested in making money with Internet media have advertising trends on their side. According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private equity firm dedicated to the media, Internet advertising, including pure-play websites and digital extensions of traditional media, will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011.
 
VSS believes that people are¬†shifting their attention to “alternative” media (including the Internet),¬†and migrating away from advertising-supported media, such as broadcast TV and newspapers, to consumer-supported platforms, such as cable TV and videogames. Time spent with consumer-supported media grew 19.8 percent from 2001 to 2006, while time spent with ad-supported media declined 6.3 percent in the period.

“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, increased consumer control and multitasking, and the growing impact of advanced technology on conventional media models. The result has been the extraordinary growth of alternative advertising and marketing,‚Äù Rutherfurd said.¬†

via FT