• Adweek, Wednesday, March 7, 2007 11 AM

The financial services firm Piper Jaffray raised eyebrows recently with a new report called "User Revolution," in which it predicted that global Web advertising would exceed $81 billion in just four years, representing a 21% compounded annual growth rate.

The shift in user media consumption will drive up ad spending on the Web, co-author and lead Internet analyst Safa Rashtchy says, as Web users consume more of what he calls "communtainment." He points to young people as the driving force of this phenomenon, citing their use of communication through IM and MySpace. Whereas older consumers keep talking separate from, say, working or watching a movie or TV, "those activities are intertwined" for younger consumers. They send media files to each other via IM, chatting as they listen to music and watch videos.

Rashtchy says Google is the most important company of this so-called "user revolution," the first company to put users in control of everything.

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