• by Laurie Petersen , May 29, 2007

Online ad spending is the only bright spot for newspaper publishers as the migration of ad spending from newspaper print to online channels continues. Year-over-year first-quarter ad spending on newspaper Web sites grew by 22.3% to $750 million, the Newspaper Association of America reports.

Still, total advertising expenditures at newspapers and their Web sites were down for the period, totaling $10.6 billion for the first quarter of 2007, a 4.8% decrease from the same period a year earlier. Spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $9.8 billion, down 6.4% from the year-ago period.

Web advertising made up 7.1% of total newspaper ad spending, compared to 5.5% for the same period a year ago, according to the NAA.

Among the major print components in the first quarter, classified advertising fell 13.2% to $3.4 billion. Retail declined 2.2% to $4.8 billion and national was down 2.8%, coming in at $1.7 billion.

Within the classified print category in the first quarter, real estate advertising fell 14.2% to $953 million. Recruitment dropped 14.3% to $975.3 million. Automotive was down 20.1% to $751.3 million. All other classifieds were down 0.5% to $699.3 million.