Nielsen-NetRatings Top Online Advertising Categories.

Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard in Internet audience measurement and analysis, revealed the top industries which had the strongest online advertising presence in May, with the retail goods and services category leading the way as the top industry advertising online. In fact, retail companies accounted for 6 out of the top 10 online advertisers for the month.

According to data from the Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance service, retail goods and services took the top spot as the No. 1 industry advertising on the Web, issuing more than 33.8 billion ad impressions (see Table 1). Overall online advertising impressions jumped 77 percent year-over-year to 94.2 billion impressions in May as compared to 53.2 billion ad impressions one year prior.

The financial services category came in second, issuing 14.4 billion online ad impressions while Web Media related ads totaled 12.1 billion. Rounding out the top five list, travel-related online advertising reached 5.4 billion impressions and the entertainment category recorded 4.3 billion online advertising impressions. Twelve out of the 13 industries measured posted year-over-year increases in online ad impressions, with seven categories boasting triple digit growth.

“Retail companies continue to lead all industry segments in using the Web to get their marketing and branding messages across,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president of client analytics, NetRatings. “Books and CDs are still the most dominant products promoted on the Web, as evidenced by this month’s top advertiser, Bertelsmann, who led with large campaigns for DoubleDirect and CDNow.”

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