eMarketer Thursday released an updated ad forecast predicting that online would surpass print ad spending this year.

“U.S. online advertising spending, which grew 23% to $32.03 billion in 2011, is expected to grow an additional 23.3% to $39.50 billion this year, pushing it ahead of total spending on print newspapers and magazines,” the research aggregator and analyst projects in its updated forecast, which projects that ad spending is expected to fall to $33.80 billion in 2012, from $36.00 billion in 2011.

The big question in everyone’s mind is what does this mean for print and digital departments at newspapers and how should they be addressing this change. iMediaConnection, put out a great post that sums up the situation perfectly. We recommend everyone give this article a good read and post your comments below:

What the decline of print means for digital

Publishers and marketers alike are compelled to start considering, now, how to add more visual and multimedia material to written pieces to make them stand out, to encourage opt-in and tune-in from target audiences, to deliver appropriate content to mobile platforms, and to make complex information easily and visually digestible — in a hurry. (Infographics are becoming very, very popular with marketers, as are charticles with publishers.)