The latest figures from the Advertising Association show that the amount of money spent on UK internet advertising rose by a staggering 73.1 per cent from 2004 to 2005.

In contrast, national newspaper advertising spend fell by 3 per cent and for regional papers by 4.4 per cent. Online advertising now represents a larger share of the UK market than consumer and business magazines, outdoor, cinema and radio advertising.

Total online advertising spend was estimated at £1.131 million for 2005 - £748 million from classified advertising and £383 million from display, such as banners and button adverts.

Overall spend on advertising for all media was £15.973 million, showing 2.1 per cent growth from 2004.

• Another aggregated classified advertising site launched this month. Vast.com scrapes adverts from other sites in the same way that Google News aggregates news headlines, and currently has 15 million listings for jobs, motoring and personals. Oodle, Indeed, Edgeio and SimplyHired also provide aggregated classified services.

Vast.com is US-based, and gathers data from around 50,000 sites including Craigslist.

Advert aggregation sites could present an increasing challenge to online newspapers that are already reported to be losing significant revenue to free, rival listings services.