Local web advertising has proven to be a valuable market over that last few years. Their target was primarily larger businesses that helped this market grow at lightning fast speeds. That is until the recession began to set in and marketing budgets started to tighten. This has left many web advertisers looking for a new target market to tap into. The answer for many of these local web advertisers seems to lie with smaller businesses.

In the past, small and medium sized businesses proved to be wary of using the Internet for advertising. In many cases web advertising can prove to be a less expensive alternative to other forms of advertising such as print. As a result, many smaller businesses are now hurrying to advertise on the web.

Last year, these smaller companies spent nearly $7 billion on web advertising. It has been suggested that tapping into this lucrative market might not prove to be so easy. Gordon Borrell with Borrell Associates said “The point is that for everybody’s desire to get to those SMBs because they appear to be a pot of gold, it is a heck of a lot more complicated than that. It will require thought and stamina to corral them in a way that will provide sustainable income for a media company.”

One of the major issues with smaller businesses is that they typically spend a lot less on an individual basis when compared with much larger businesses. This presents a problem for web advertisers, as the amount of work that they must do is comparable between the two groups.