A new form of online advertising being used by newspapers has allowed medium sized businesses to reach out to the community in a simple, accessible form similar to a community notice board, Click Z reported Tuesday.

Flyerboards is a product of PaperG, an advertising company formed by Yale and Harvard graduates and funded by the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, and was launched last autumn. Thus far the product has attracted the Web sites of the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle and others. Hearst, the publisher of the Chronicle, has recently signed up the rest of its 15 newspapers to Flyerboards.

The advertising application creates a list of ads from small companies on the left of the page. When an ad is clicked on, it expands into a larger ad that gives business information, map and link to the company's Web site.

The Flyerboards application has seen a range of use by online newspapers, but focuses on community advertising, from local town ads to classifieds. Boston.com currently has 10 pages using Flyerboards, with the addition of two more this week.

"They're ideal for small to medium sized businesses that are looking for a small targeted audience with a limited budget of under $1,000 a month," said Jim Bodor, Boston.com's director of product development, according to Click Z. According to Bodor, Boston.com sells those ads for three months, six months or a full year.

Bodor says the ease of use appeals to some advertisers, where text and a simple graphic can also translate in to cost effectiveness.

At Chron.com, Flyerboard space can be bought for as little as three days, allowing for increased accessibility for smaller local businesses that want to highlight one off events. Chron.com will run up to 20 different ads on a single Flyerboard, rotating them every time a page is refreshed, ClickZ reported.