Furthermore, the study found that consumer time spent on media fell 0.5% whereas time spend consuming media on the job jumped 3.2%.

This is only logical: people spend less and less time with traditional media, reading long newspaper articles and watching long programs on television. Their use is shifting towards digital platforms, where they read shorter articles or watch short video clips.

On the other hand, time spent in the office is increasingly time spent online. People are searching for information, and the easiest way to do this is via the Internet.

What does this mean for newspapers? Well, for starters, the report also says that in 2007, the time spent reading online will overcome the time spent reading newspapers, not that shocking considering that people who used to read the printed version now sit at their desks and read it online. And where the eyeballs migrate, so do the ad dollars, albeit somewhat later than the eyeballs. 

Granted, newspapers will still compose a sizeable chunk of the $60 billion spend on print advertising in 2011. But how much of the $62 billion online spending will be spent on online newspapers? Hopefully enough to make the transition from their traditional business models to the evolving digital one. But considering the enormous amount of sites on the Web, and the clout of search engines such as Google when it comes to online advertising, newspapers' evolving digital business model may have to start evolving a lot faster.

Source: Poynter 

Some notable quotes from the report's excerpt:

"The drop in consumer media usage was driven by the continued migration of consumers to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment, which require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts. For example, consumers typically watch broadcast or cable television at least 30 minutes per session while they spend as little as five to seven minutes viewing consumer-generated video clips online."

"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."

"'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.'”

"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."