Local advertisers in the United States this year are expected to spend nearly five times the amount spent in 2004 on Internet advertising, according to research firm Borrell Associates. In contrast, newspaper Web sites saw 44 percent of local online ad revenue in 2004, but just 27 percent in 2008, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Borrell estimates U.S. local advertisers will spend about US$12.9 billion in online advertising by the end of this year, and newspapers owned by McClatchy, E.W. Scripps Company and A.H. Belo are changing their online sales strategies to capture a bigger percentage of these ad dollars, according to The Times.

Small local accounts, not just large ones, are key to casting a wider net for online ad dollars. Meanwhile, as print sales have declined, they also cause online sales to drop when the two are bundled, The Times reported, citing the information from the Newspaper Association of America.

Mark Contreras, senior vice president for newspapers at Scripps, told The Times that online ad revenue tied to print has dropped about 17 percent this year. Online-only revenue, however, has increased by nearly 30 percent.

About 10 percent of revenue comes from online at Scripps, 68 percent of which is currently tied to print ads, Contreras told The Times.

Christian A. Hendricks, vice president for interactive media at McClatchy, said half of Internet ad sales are linked to print, and online ad sales were up 9 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. However, online-only ad sales were up 27 percent.

Meanwhile, at A.H. Belo, online revenue dropped 19 percent in the third quarter compared to the same time last year. The company is now using telemarketers to grow ad sales from local businesses, and has also created a tool for advertisers to make their own ads, The Times reported.