For the fourth straight month, the number of online display impressions surged in July, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance. Last month saw 102.9 billion online display
impressions--up from 97.1 billion in June, 93.1 billion in May, and 91.4 billion in April.
Last month, MySpace's popularity with advertisers continued to climb. MySpace was responsible for
10.8 percent of online impressions, up from 7.9 percent in June and 6.3 percent in May.
MySpace's popularity appears to have come at the expense of Yahoo! Mail and MSN Hotmail, which accounted
for 7.6 percent and 6.9 percent of online impressions, respectively, last month. In July 2004, Yahoo! Mail garnered 8.1 percent of display ads, while Hotmail was responsible for 8 percent.
Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance doesn't include in the data ads served on proprietary America Online pages, accessed only by AOL subscribers, but counts ads that appear on AOL pages accessed via the
Web.
Financial services ads accounted for 21 percent of impressions last month, a market share unchanged from last year. Web media dipped to 18 percent of impressions, from 22 percent a year ago.
Retail goods and services accounted for 14 percent of impressions, as they did last year; telecommunications ads represented 10 percent of online impressions, up from 8 percent one year ago; and
public services were responsible for 9 percent of impressions, up from 5 percent last year.
Car ads accounted for 4 percent of impressions in July, up from 3 percent last year. Within that
category, General Motors Corp. was responsible for the most impressions of all auto manufacturers--1.229 billion, at an estimated cost of $7.179 million. General Motors' online advertising accounted
for 27.9 percent of all car ads, up from 17.5 percent in July of 2004.
Toyota Motor Corp. placed 19.3 percent of the online display ads for cars, up from 13.5 percent last year. DaimlerChrysler
Corp.--the largest online car advertiser last year, with 26.6 percent of online impressions in July--accounted for just 16.6 percent of online display ads last month.
Ford Motor Co. nearly
tripled its share of impressions, accounting for 13.5 percent of car ads last month, up from 5.3 percent in July of 2004. Hyundai Motor Co. also upped its online ads; last month Hyundai ran 5.7
percent of all online car ads, up from 0.3 percent in July 2004.