Local.com announced today that it has reached a milestone of 5,000 businesses that have directly signed up for online advertising through its Local Promote subscription advertising service. Local Promote includes a landing page, call tracking, and premium placements within search results on Local.com and other sites in the company’s network.

The 5,000 mark compares with the 3,500 advertisers the company had just one month ago — an increase it attributes to the direct sales push it recently initiated. Based on advertiser growth, the company is publicly stating a goal of 50,000 advertisers by the end of next year.

Overall, it has many more than 5,000 advertisers placed throughout its local content network via third-party channel partners such as Citysearch. This number of direct advertisers puts it near the same levels of MerchantCircle, which recently announced a similar milestone (though the ad products and overall business models differ).

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Related: Peter Hutto, Local.com VP of business development and sales, will speak this Thursday at SES San Jose during a TKG-run session on the evolution of local search.