Online classified ads has come long way since its beginning. Putting an ad in front of as many potential customers as possible illustrates how dynamic the process of classified advertising has become.

Online classified ads have opened the options for advertisers move beyond newspaper ads and fliers on coffee-shop bulletin boards. And for customers or buyers looking for a car, an apartment, a job or a new puppy, it means better chances of seeing relevant ads on a variety of sites. 

This push into online classifieds - a business dominated by newspapers for more than a century - is still very much in flux. While classified revenue has been shrinking at newspapers across the country, a growing number of Web companies, both established and new, are moving into the business, although not necessarily dominating the market.

Newspapers have lost their grip on classifieds in recent years. Once a steady source of revenue, classified advertising at some of the larger chains has dropped 14 to 20 percent over the past year, notably in once-lucrative segments such as automotive, real estate and employment ads, according to Fitch Ratings. Fitch, a credit ratings agency in New York, said this week that newspaper performance has been weaker than it originally forecast for the year.

Online traffic to classified sites, meanwhile, has grown 23 percent. As an example traffic to classified ads sites was more then 46 million unique visitors only in July 2007, up from about 37 million a year earlier, according to the market research firm ComScore in Reston. Traffic has declined on some sites, among them Yahoo Classifieds, where it fell by 13 percent. But they have taken off some major categories which makes sense. But it has grown on some newer sites such as MySpace, where classified listings have jumped 33 percent since their August 2006 debut. 

The classified market has become increasingly fragmented as a growing number of companies search for the best way to convert offline newspaper ads into a Web format.

What is emerging are two primary online approaches. One is simply to shift the traditional classifieds model to the Web, aggregating ads to a single site. The other involves distributing those aggregated ads to as many Web sites as possible.

EBay has backed some of the biggest and best-known classified sites. It partially owns Craigslist, the popular no-frills site that collects local listings, and allows buyers and sellers to post listings free. EBay recently introduced its U.S. users to two similar sites, Kijiji and Gumtree, both of which started overseas.

WebCosmo.com, based in Cambridge MA, is another online listing site trying to compete against Craigslist, Gumtree, Kijiji and others by creating a brand name that will draw buyers and sellers to its site. What makes them unique is their countrywide, statewide, local free ad posting.

Online classified ads still have to go long way to beat the newspaper classified ads. But it has started a good competition in the advertising market.