Locally targeted newspapers and Web sites are important and potentially lucrative investments in the future of newspapers. Local online advertising is one of the few robust advertising categories circa 2009, and several media companies have proven that by combining print and online advertising offers, local products can be money making products for the future, SFN's Publishing to Targeted Audiences reported.

While local online and print advertising continues to climb, the growth rates are slowing down in some parts of the world, according to Borrell Associates.

In the United States, for example, local online advertising growth has slowed from a 46.5 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2004 to 2009, to a projected 2.9 percent CAGR from 2010 to 2014. In 2008, local online newspapers garnered 11.8 percent of the market share of all local online advertising in the United States, according to the report, Publishing to Targeted Audiences, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.