Advertising Breakdown by Industry and Type, December 2006 and January 2007

Nielsen//NetRatings have released their December-January report that gives the US industry breakdown of online advertising placements and types, as well as the top 25 companies placing sponsored links. You can see the summary tables at this ClickZ page.

The boom in bandwidth has had an impact on how advertisers are trying to pitch customers. It looks like Flash adverts have finally come into their own in the US, and in many industries the number of impressions that Flash ads received in January exceeded the number of impressions received by standard images. Rich media ads, not surprisingly, are not making much of a showing at all. In South Africa, where bandwidth continues to be in short supply, we can expect Flash and rich media to continue to have a limited presence, at least for another year or two.

For example, the automotive industry had 2.3 billion Flash impressions compared with only 1.3 billion standard image ad impressions. Flash is ahead in the consumer goods industry, entertainment, electronics, software, telecommunications (12.8 billion Flash vs 3.3 billion standard), travel, and even the health industry. Flash still plays second fiddle in financial services, retail, public services, and business-to-business.

The report also details the top 25 companies placing sponsored links. Here eBay still dominates the top slot with 4.6 billion sponsored link impressions, with Google way behind in second place with 1.5 billion impressions and QuinStreet in third place with 1.1 billion.

What keywords do you have to buy to get that kind of exposure? Well among the top keywords that caused eBay links to appear were “happy new year posters” and “new year graphics.” For Google, it was simply “map” and “gmail.”

How does direct marketing firm QuinStreet get so much exposure for its clients? Long tail keywords like “how to apply false eyelashes” seem to do the trick.

If you are using contextual advertising systems like Google’s AdWords, Microsoft’s adCenter, or Yahoo’s Panama, you will find that not only can longer search phrases get you great exposure and click-throughs, they can be a whole lot cheaper than one- or two-word search expressions that everyone else is bidding for.