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Call it 2011: The Print Odyssey as the Internet shunts newspapers aside over the next four years as the largest medium for ads.

2011: Net Replaces Papers As Top Ad Medium

Private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) made the bold prediction of what the time leading up to 2011 holds for the advertising world. While we're going through the process of another Presidential campaign in 2011, online advertising will exceed that of newspapers.

The firm predicted a compound annual growth rate of 6.7 percent for the period of 2006-2011. Their 'VSS Communications Industry Forecast 2007-2011' suggested communications spending will top $1 trillion in the US in 2008 for the first time in history.

The company discussed the shift in consumer attention, and where it will go over the next few years:

In addition to shifting their attention to alternative media, consumers are also 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 at a CAGR of 19.8 percent from 2001 to 2006, while time spent with ad-supported media declined 6.3 percent in the period.

Spending on alternative advertising – including Internet, mobile, videogames and digital out-of-home, among others – grew 36.6 percent to $26.53 billion in 2006 and posted a CAGR of 23.9 percent from 2001 to 2006. Traditional advertising spending, however, grew only 2.4 percent to $183.21 billion in 2006 while producing a CAGR of 2.8 percent in the five-year period, hindered by slow growth in print-based newspapers, yellow pages and consumer magazines.

All that's left is the construction of a black monolith in memoriam of the newspaper world in 2011, perhaps with a pithy eulogy inscribed upon it.