• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 14, 2005

The overall number of online display impressions grew by 4.2 percent to 97.1 billion in June, from 93.1 billion and 91.4 billion in May and April respectively, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance unit. Display impressions last reached 97.1 billion in March.

Social networking site MySpace beat out heavyweights MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail as the leading site for advertisers to promote their wares in June, with a 7.9 percent share of ad impressions. In May, MSN Hotmail led with 7.4 percent of ad impressions, compared with MySpace's 6.3 percent.

Web media ads held onto about 20 percent of all impressions in June, more than any other industry, while the percentage of retail goods and services related ads rose from 14 to 16 percent; telecom related ads dropped from 13 to 10 percent month-over-month.

Orbitz led all travel advertisers in June, accounting for 23 percent of travel ad impressions, a considerable increase from its 16 percent share in June of last year, AdRelevance reported. Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp's share of travel ad impressions jumped from 11.3 to 15.6 percent year-over-year, while newcomer Travelot went from no presence in 2004 to 6.2 percent of travel impressions this year.