Although we have all seen this coming, it will be the year 2012 when – for the first time – online ad spending will exceed the total amount spent on newspapers and print magazines, according to eMarketer. By the end of this year, online ad spending will increase up to almost $40 billion, while total print spending will be $33.8 billion. eMarketer even predicts online ad spending to grow over the next five years and reach $62 billion. In the same period of time print advertising will remain stagnant or might even slightly decrease to $32.3 billion by 2016. Market watcher Forrester Research sees online advertising in an even more prosperous light and estimates total online ad spending to be $77 billion by 2016, comprising 35% of overall ad spending.

But don’t worry, we don’t have to be concerned about the future of television advertising. Although the gap between television advertising and online advertising will shrink significantly over the next couple of years, television ad spending (in the U.S.) will continue to grow on a moderate level.

We can currently not only observe a shift from print to online marketing but also a shift within online advertising. Mobile ads is expected to overtake all kind of other online marketing channels this year and will take 15 percent of global online ad spend by 2016, according to research firm Berg Insight.

Berg pointed out that companies are now willing to launch full campaigns on mobile – increasingly integrating mobile advertising in their media mix – whereas they have been applying mobile ads in a more experimental way until now.

If one wants to make sure, that a trend is industry changig, one only has to look at what big marketing spenders do – so let’s have a look at Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola spent more than $2.9 billion on advertising in 2010 AND Coca-Cola invests more in mobile and social media as they go hand in hand and Coca Cola is constantly using both to further engage with their customers. In order to have them interact even more with their brand, they ran a banner ad via Hallmark’s Ultimate Holiday iPhone application last year, offering users a chance to win a Playstation prize.

As marketer also want to reach us, consumers while we are on our mobile phones and tablets and my feeling that we are caring less and less about where content comes from, television channels and Internet content may blur in the near future!