• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 18, 2006

Online ads for movies and TV shows have generated a lot of attention recently, but the entertainment industry still accounts for just a small proportion of online display ads, according to Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance. Last month, the entertainment sector was responsible for 3 percent of all online display ads--the same as in January.

The top advertiser within the entertainment category was MySpace.com parent News Corp., which accounted for 15.3 percent of online display ads. Other large entertainment advertisers were Time Warner (10.9 percent), The Walt Disney Corp. (10.5 percent), General Electric Company (10.1 percent), and Sony Corporation (8 percent).

Overall, financial services accounted for the single largest proportion of display ads--25 percent--up slightly from both last month (24 percent) and last year (21 percent). Web Media was responsible accounted for the second largest proportion--18 percent--the same as both last month and last year, while retail goods and services accounted for 17 percent, up from last month (16 percent) and last year (14 percent).

Where did online marketers place their ads? Yahoo Mail remained the single most popular site, drawing 32.9 percent of online ads. Social networking site MySpace continued to be a big draw for advertisers, capturing 18.7 percent of online ads, while MSN Hotmail rounded out the top three with 7 percent.

The overall number of cost-per-thousand impression display ads tracked by Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance totaled 187.2 billion--down from 193.6 billion in June, and 197.7 billion in May. But the company also doesn't track certain types of online advertising, including pre-roll, partnerships and sponsorships. The AdRelevance data doesn't include ads served on proprietary AOL pages, but counts ads that appear on AOL pages accessed via the Web.