TV stations’ online advertising revenue rose 72 percent to $772 million in 2007 and may rise another 55 percent to $1.2 billion in 2008, according to the sixth annual survey of local Web spending from Borrell Associates.

What’s more, TV stations captured 6.9 percent of $8.7 billion in total local online spending in 2007, doubling their 2006 share.

“Broadcasters paid more attention to the Web and grew share better than anybody else,” said Kip Cassino, VP of research for Borrell. “They started training their sales force and really looking at what they were putting on the Web and monetizing it,” he added.

The stations’ gain came at the expense of newspapers, which have been the preeminent Web site operators in most markets, he said.

The study identifies 14 markets where TV station sites have now surpassed the local papers in terms of traffic. At the top of the list is Hubbard’s KOB Albuquerque, N.M., which attracted 423 percent more visitors in the past month than the Albuquerque Tribune.

Overall, however, newspapers retained a big lead over TV stations in local online revenue share, the study says.

In 2007, newspapers captured 24.6 percent of the pie, $3.1 billion of the $8.7 billion in total spending.

The biggest share of the online spending in 2007 (57.3 percent) went to “pure play” Web sites—that is, sites unaffiliated with newspaper, TV stations or other traditional media.

Pure plays like Google and snagajob.com are “delivering lower-cost advertising that intercepts consumers not as they are reading news online, but as they are using the Web to research products and prices,” the study says.

The study also concludes that the most financially successful local Web operations are venturing into page designs and product lines that have little to do with the medium that gave birth to them.

“Like their new media predecessors in radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s, they are creating unique identities and breaking away from their print and broadcast roots,” it says.

The study says that “everybody” is now going after the Yellow Pages with local online business directories and search-advertising packages.

“Unfortunately for them, Yellow Pages publishers have already staked out the turf and have been the most successful of all media companies at developing their interactive revenue and protecting their core customer base.”

Over the past four years, the report says, local online advertising has grown at nearly 50 percent a year.

However, that pace will not continue. Growth will average 15 percent over the next four years as it begins to level off in 2010 and 2011 at around $22 billion, Borrell predicts.

The Yellow Pages “lead the pack” is shifting revenue to its online operations. AT&T Yellow Pages, for instance, derives 10.7 percent of its revenue from the Web.

By contrast, newspaper publishers like Morris Communications and the New York Times Co. take 8.9 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively, from the Web.

The station group with the largest percentage of revenue coming from the Web is Belo at 3.7 percent. Gannett (3.3 percent), LIN (3.2 percent) and Gray (3.1 percent) follow.

The report is based on a survey of 3,108 media properties, including 613 TV station sites and 1,013 newspaper sites.