October Ad Breakdown Shows Financial Growth

The pull of online networks is drawing financial services companies to increase their online advertising efforts, according to a new report from Nielsen//NetRatings.

by Kristina Knight

According to the AdRelevance report, financial service companies accounted for roughly 30% of online display ads in October. That is up 28% from September numbers and 21% from 2005 numbers. In the past, financial services have stayed offline, choosing to advertise in newspapers, magazines and television. The switch could indicate a growing trust in online advertising.

For the October survey, online media ranked second for monthly impressions with 17% of ads. Retail sites, telecommunications companies and public services rounded out the top five.

Perhaps most interesting is that email sites received more than half of all impressions in October. Yahoo’s email service took more than 45% of all ads, MSN’s Hotmail took 6%.

Social networking sites were also a favorite of advertisers, drawing roughly 17% of impressions. MySpace accounted for more than 15% of all social networking impressions; they are the second most popular company for online marketers to work with.

In the final tally, search engines were responsible for nearly 8% of impressions. News sites took 3.9%, sports and recreations sites accounted for 2.9%, entertainment portals 2.7%, finance sites 2.5%.

Tags: MySpace, Nielsen, online marketing, search marketing, social network advertising