UK national newspapers can increase revenues by hundreds of millions of pounds each year just by changing the way they charge for advertising on their Web sites, Ernst & Young research has revealed, Thomson Financial reported Tuesday.

Search giant Google Inc., for example, charges advertisers on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning that they charge advertisers every time a reader clicks on a Web ad. According to the Ernst & Young research, UK newspapers charge advertisers only every thousand times their ad appears on a Web site.

The Guardian, Times Online, The Daily Mail & General Trust and Telegraph titles could have made £120-250 million each in 2007 just from their UK traffic, by simply charging advertisers on CPC system, according to the Ernst & Young calculations, Thomson Financial reported in an article posted by Forbes.

Ernst & Young estimates, however, that each paper made between £15 million and £20 million from online ad revenues.

“This gap is an opportunity for newspapers as it shows that monetizing online services in the UK is possible,” Luca Mastrodonato, a media and entertainment analyst at E&Y, told Thomson Financial.