Small U.S. businesses spent about $6.7 billion last year for online marketing efforts, with only a fraction going to online advertising, according to a report by local media researcher Borrell Associates. The report, Main Street Goes Interactive (sub req.), advances the case that Borrell has made before: local advertising, the kind that has traditionally spent small individual amounts on newspaper classifieds and Yellow Pages is up for grabs. Unfortunately, content publishers have a tough time prying their marketing dollars for more general advertising purposes.

SEE ALSO: The Local Online Ad Locomotive Slows; Little Or No Growth In ‘08, Borrell Says

—Keeping the money within: Small-to-medium sized businesses (or “SMBs”) are expected to increase their total interactive ad spend 24 percent during the next five years – from $7.4 billion to more than $9 billion. As the chart after the jump shows, most of that spending will go towards “non-ad marketing efforts” like site design—when asked in which online media they planned to spend most on, two-thirds said marketing dollars would be devoted to their own sites—search engine optimization and building customer data bases. While display currently commands 54 percent of their online budgets, that number is expected to decline significantly over the next year. View the chart after the jump.