THE GROWING INTERNET SEARCH SEGMENT generated about as much spending as display advertising for the first half of 2006, according to Steve Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence.

In a report on ad spending for the first six months of the year, TNS reported that Web advertising, excluding search, grew 18.9 percent to $4.7 billion. Fredericks estimates that paid search generated an additional $4.7 billion in spending.

Local newspapers and local radio continue to struggle due to Internet competition--down 3.9 percent (to $11.7 billion) and 1.5 percent (to $3.6 billion), respectively--but have been attempting to diversify their businesses with more viable Internet operations themselves.

Fredericks said that if ad revenues from complementary Web sites were added in, the sector performances may improve, but not enough to overcome Internet competition. "They're losing dollars to the Internet," Fredericks said. "However, newspapers and even radio all have Internet components and those aren't' taken into account when we look at individual media. It doesn't make up for the loss of sales to the Internet but will continue to grow."