Facebook accounts for nearly one in three online ads in the US

WEBSITE TRAFFIC COUNTER Comscore has revealed that the social notworking website Facebook accounts for nearly a third of online ads in the US.

The results report on 1.11tn display ads that were shown to US internet users during the first quarter of this year. Of those 1.11tn just over 346bn impressions were from Facebook, making up a whopping 31.2 per cent.

This figure is over three times more than its closest rival and is almost double the number of ad impressions it displayed in the first quarter of 2010.

In second place is Yahoo Sites with 122.5bn impressions, accounting for 10.1 per cent of the total. Software house Microsoft came in third with 53.5bn, making up 4.8 per cent.

Internet search giant Google turned up in fifth place with 27.9bn impressions, amounting to 2.5 per cent. It got beaten for fourth place by AOL, which had 0.5 per cent more impressions at 33.4bn.

Jeff Hackett, EVP of Comscore said, "The U.S. online display advertising market maintained its strong momentum from last year with a terrific first quarter."

The findings also reported that Facebook's advertising market share has increased 15 percentage points from 16.2 per cent in the first quarter. µ