Facebook has most US display ads while Yahoo gains in search

Google wobbles?

It's been a busy few days for US Internet market research company comScore as it released figures on the US search and Internet display advertising markets.

Today it revealed Facebook is now the number one display advertiser in the US, with 16.2 percent of the trillion display ads served to US surfers in Q1. But this won't put it at the top of the table in terms of revenue, with the likes of Google and Yahoo still comfortably ahead.

The total number of display ads represented a fifteen percent year-on-year increase, and the biggest advertisers were mobile phone operators AT&T and Verizon. "Following a severe ad recession that began in late 2008 and continued through the first three quarters of 2009, we've been seeing a strong resurgence in the online display ad market," said Jeff Hackett, comScore SVP.

"The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers. This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010."

Meanwhile Yahoo seems to be gaining on Google in the search market, with its share jumping to 17.7 percent in April from 16.9 percent in March. Pretty much all of that share was taken from Google.