How much money was spent on classified advertising in the U.S. in 2004?

Hello fbias:

Thanks for the interesting question.

I've been able to find some very definitive numbers for you on
classified advertising revenues for 2004 (as well as other types of
newspaper ad revenue).

Newspaper Advertising Rises 4.2 Percent in Fourth Quarter; Classified
Increases 5.2 Percent Led by 19 Percent Rise in Recruitment Ads
URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050302/dcw029_1.html
Quote: "For the full year, ad spending in printed weekday and Sunday
newspapers increased 3.9 percent to $46.7 billion. Classified lead the
way with a 5.1 percent gain to $16.6 billion."

However, that figure is only for *printed* classified advertising - it
does not include *online* revenues. If you are only interested in
print revenues, then skip the next section of this answer.

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I decided to go to the source (The Newspaper Association of America)
for this data and check into the online figures. The table where these
figures came from is:

Quarterly Newspaper Advertising Expenditures
URL: http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=1399&SID=147

We can see that the total online advertising revenue for 2004 was (in millions):

325.39 + 389.42 + 409.71 + 416.76 = 1,541.28

or $1,541,280,000. If we were to assume that the same ratio of
classified to other ad revenue that holds for print were to hold for
online as well, then we should add:

16.6/46.7 * $1,541,280,000 = $547,863,982

or approximately .5 billion to the original total, giving us (in billions):

16.6 + .5 = 17.1 

So that would make the overall classified revenues (print and online)
$17.1 billion.
*************************

A very nice breakdown of the classified print revenues, by type, is given in:

Newspaper Classified Advertising Expenditures - Thousands of Dollars
by Quarter, 1995-Present
URL: http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=1570&SID=1022
Note: Scroll down to the bottom of table for 2004 figures. 

Search Strategy (on Google):
* "classified advertising" 2004 billion
+ following links and compiling data

I hope this helps. If you need any further clarification, please let
me know before you rate this answer.

websearcher

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Clarification of Answer by websearcher-ga on 07 Apr 2005 08:02 PDT

In case you were wondering about more than *newspaper* classified
advertising, I've found the following as well:

Craigslist costs newspapers 
URL: http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/28/technology/craigslist/
Quote: "Classified advertising represents a $28 billion to $30 billion
business in the U.S., including $16 billion in daily newspapers, and
an estimated $100 billion business internationally, according to
Classified Intelligence's study."

websearcher