• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 20, 2006

Online marketers served 141 billion display ads last month, marking a 2 percent increase from January, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance.

With tax season approaching, financial services marketers accounted for 28 percent of all online impressions--a jump from both January's 22 percent and last February's 21 percent. Retail goods and services marketers accounted for 17 percent of impressions, compared to 14 percent last year and 16 percent last month.

Telecoms purchased 15 percent of all online ads--almost double last year's 9 percent, but a slight drop-off from January's 16 percent. Vonage Holdings Corp. accounted for almost half--or 45 percent--of last month's telecom ads, up from 24 percent last year. Verizon Communications was responsible for 15 percent of telecom ads, compared to 13.5 percent last year; and Bell South Corporation was responsible for 11 percent of telecom ads, about the same as last year.

E-mail sites continued to grow in popularity with marketers, garnering 38 percent of all online impression dollars, up from last month's 35 percent and last year's 20 percent. Yahoo Mail alone accounted for 23 percent of all impressions, while MSN Hotmail drew 13 percent. General community sites accounted for 15 percent of impressions--up from 7 percent last year--while portals and search engines claimed 10 percent of impressions, down from last year's 17 percent share. MySpace continued to be a big draw, with 12.5 percent of all impressions. Last month, the social networking site accounted for 10 percent of display ads.

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.

Online Display Impressions March 2005--February 2006

Month	Impressions Served (bil)
March	97.1
April	91.4
May	93.1
June	97.1
July	102.9
August	112.1
September	110.2
October	124.5
November	115.2
December	123.6
January	138.2
February	141.0

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance