A sales executive of Sweden's biggest tabloid, Aftonbladet, said that print media remains an advertising force, despite rhetoric to the contrary about all things digital.

At the World Newspaper Advertising Conference in Malta last week participaters concluded that print will continue to be a unique advantage in the advertising world for many years to come, wrote Editor&Publisher;.

"Most of the revenues are still connected to print products - you can still make a lot of money from print", said Anders Berglund, Sales Director of Sweden's biggest daily newspaper, Aftonbladet. "It is important to have a focus on interesting new launches and new products, but also continue to develop the established products."

The Swedish newspaper, owned by Norwegian media house Schibsted, is "one of the most successful newspapers world-wide in terms of digital advertising", the report said. It produces a nearly 50-50 split in advertising revenues from print and digital. But the 160 million euros it generates from newspaper sales annually dwarfs the 95 million that comes from advertising, Editor&Publisher; said.

Online advertising spending in the United States will overtake spending on newspaper ads this year for the first time, digital research firm eMarketer said in December.

"Marketers are devoting bigger shares of their budgets to digital media as they see more customers shifting time toward the Web," eMarketer chief executive Geoff Ramsey said in a blog post. "It's something we've seen coming for a long time, but this is a tipping point," Ramsey said.

However, the bulk of online revenues are going to Google and other search engines and will never come to media companies.