Nielsen reports drop in ad impressions

From August to September, advertising impressions fell about 16% according to a recent report from Nielsen//Netratings. The falling impression rate was noted in all verticals except two: hardware/electronics and consumer goods.

by Kristina Knight

Hardware/electronics came in with a 14% increase in ad impressions and consumer goods saw a 9% impression increase.

Let's take a closer look at the verticals that showed a decrease in impressions.

The largest decrease was seen in the B2B services vertical. Serving up 8.3 million impressions, the category showed a 40% decrease from August to September. Next were software marketers with a 35% decrease in impressions, serving up only 4.4 million impressions. Public service advertisers also saw a sharp decline (25%), serving up 9.6 million online ads.

Financial service marketers fell 12% (87 million impressions served) from August to September and online media declined 4%, serving up 74 million impressions. Meanwhile retail goods and services advertisers declined only 0.04% (51 million impressions served).

With these declining numbers, traditional ad forms took the top slots as far as impressions served. Traditional image/text banners were the most popular ad form with 166 million impressions served during the tracking periods. Flash/Generic banner ads ranked second with 79 million impressions served and sponsored links ranked third with 65 million ads served from August to September.