• Dow Jones, Thursday, August 28, 2008 2 PM

MySpace owner Fox Interactive Media has overtaken Yahoo as the top display advertising property in the U.S., according to new data from comScore. In June, 56.8 billion display ads were viewed on the News Corp. company's sites, giving it a 15.2% share of the total U.S. display market. Yahoo, meanwhile, served 53.1 billion display ads in the same time period, accumulating a 14.2% share.

The data represents a rather big change from May, when Yahoo was still top of the display pile with a 15.9% share, compared to FIM's 13.5%. Dow Jones points out that the June data will raise fresh concerns about Yahoo's ability to grow its online advertising business. "It's a continuation of this trend that eyeballs are going to other places on the Internet, and advertisers are recognizing that," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said. "It's a step in the wrong direction for where Yahoo wants things to go."

But it's all good news for FIM, highlighting the potential of MySpace, in particular; the social network accounts for nearly all of FIM's display revenue. However, despite serving more overall ad impressions, MySpace ads sell at prices that are sometimes five times cheaper than those on Yahoo, partly because social networking users ignore ads. Even Google has struggled to make as much money as it anticipated from its partnership with MySpace.

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