Real estate agents are spending more money on advertising, and more of it online, according to a new report from Classified Intelligence.

The study points to a continued movement away from traditional print media and newspaper classifieds toward online free listing sites such as Google Base and Craigslist, along with increased spending by real estate agents on their own websites. "While this has been a banner year for real estate advertising in U.S. newspapers, there's a cliff ahead - and newspapers are already beginning to see a significant fall-off in real estate revenue," Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of Classified Intelligence, said in a statement.

However, where real estate agents are putting that money online is not yet clear as a trend; the bulk of the spending is not toward conventional online marketing channels, ClickZ reports; only relatively small percentages are going toward paid search, online local newspaper listings, national listing services - with the bulk spent on Realtors' own sites.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (61 percent) said they did not advertise on local newspaper sites; a third said they were spending up to 20 percent of their ad budgets on local online newspapers. Some 58 percent said they were not using local-search advertising, and one-quarter said they put up to 20 percent of their budgets on search.

This week, Yahoo made news by revamping its real estate search site and including Prudential's listings. Moreover, companies such as Zillow are bringing more user-friendly features to the online real estate search process and attracting advertisers, causing real estate agents to reconsider their ad spends.