While major publishers have been courting major advertisers, there’s also a boom going on in the local markets. Borrell Associates’ WebAudit predicts a rise of 28.7 percent in local online ad buys for 2004, with markets such as New York (34.2%) and Los Angeles (24.2%) leading the way. Borrell includes 210 U.S. markets in its report, which tallies money spent by local advertisers for newspaper, yellow pages, search engines and other sites. Perhaps the biggest eye-opener in the report was a predicted 100 percent jump in online ads for the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY market to $40 million. Local observers were stunned by the prediction, according to the Albany Times-Union, though Gordon Borrell stood by his projections, saying they were grounded in a tech recovery and business-to-business growth.

» Local Web Spending Up Nearly 29% (ClickZ)

» Boom forecast for online ad spending (Albany Times-Union)

» 2003/04 WebAudit for U.S. Markets (Borrell research)

[via Online Publishers Association]