U.S. Ad Impressions up 21 Percent in October

Overall, ad impressions for October were up by over 20 percent, with growth in almost every vertical category with the exception of entertainment and software, according to data from Nielsen Online.

Impressions in the financial services, travel, retail, web media and telecommunications sectors all grew substantially month-on-month, perhaps suggesting the beginnings of economic recovery, or simply reflecting increased marketing activity in the run up to the holiday period. Back in 2008, however, overall impressions grew just 3 percent over the previous month.

Ads for Travel products also rose dramatically for the second month running, resulting in around 60 percent growth in impressions between August and October.

Advertising Breakdown by Industry, October 2009
Industry	Total Impressions, October 2009 (M)	Change From Previous Month (%)
Financial Services	46,165.90	33
Web Media	31,549.08	28
Telecommunications	31,540.68	27
Retail Goods & Services	19,151.23	24
Consumer Goods	10,822.43	5
Travel	9,924.48	32
Public Services	8,218.08	7
Automotive	7,796.78	14
Entertainment	7,216.97	-20
Health	5,590.10	15
Business to Business	3,505.71	1
Hardware & Electronics	3,268.14	27
Software	1,561.33	-12
Total	186,310.93	21
Source: Nielsen Online, 2009

Top 25 Companies by Sponsored Link Impressions, October 2009
Company	Sponsored Link Impressions, October 2009 (M)
Emirates	828.5
InterActiveCorp	730.1
ChnLove.com	596.9
Experian Group Limited	590.5
eBay, Inc.	384.7
Yahoo! Inc.	380.3
Amazon.com. Inc.	380.0
The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.	295.1
General Electric Company	271.3
ShareBuilder Corporation	269.4
United Online, Inc.	256.0
Bankrate, Inc.	236.6
Target Corporation	231.7
Google, Inc.	222.8
USInsuranceOnline.com	219.3
Bank of America Corporation	218.4
Core Health Systems	207.0
LatinAmericanCupid.com	197.1
True	176.7
Intelius	160.8
AdoptHelp, Inc.	157.8
Interchange Corporation	154.6
Time Warner Inc.	153.5
Smarter.com	152.8
NexTag, Inc.	151.0
Source: Nielsen Online, 2009

Methodology: Nielsen Online AdRelevance’s Cloudprober technology tracks online advertising activity across over 2,000 sites and subsites.

Nielsen Online, AdRelevance service uses a proprietary methodology for estimating online advertising expenditures and only takes into account image-based technologies and advertising sold per CPM. Above data does not reflect house advertising activity, strategic partnerships between publishers and advertisers, or text units, paid search, sponsorships, email, units contained within applications (e.g., messengers and pre-rolls) or performance based advertising.

Definition of Terms

Standard Image/Text Link: Ads that are comprised of many components, typically both image and text beneath the images, all of which link to the same destination URL.

Standard Image: Animated or static image ads; GIF or JPEG file format-based ads. HTML ads are also classified under this category.

Sponsored Link: Text-based ads that often appear as a result of a keyword search either on a search engine or associated site. These ads are often displayed alongside natural search results but identified under specified headers (e.g., “Paid Sponsor”, “Sponsored Link”, “Sponsored Sites” or “Sponsored Results”).