MySpace beats Yahoo and online advertising

While the statistics provided by comScore highlights the rapid growth of MySpace, analysts say the social networking site has struggled to get ad rates and the highest possible price similar to Yahoo.

Yahoo! lost the top spot of advertising presence in the U.S. market at the hands of MySpace and companies to which it belongs, Fox Interactive Media for News Corp, according to new data reveal the industry.

The cluster of sites of Fox Interactive, led by MySpace, recorded 56.8 million advertising views in June compared to the Yahoo group sites, which totaled 53.1 million views, according to data released this week by the firm of Internet audience measurement comScore.



publicidad onlineBut while the statistic highlights the rapid growth of MySpace in terms of audience advertising, analysts say the social networking site has struggled to get ad rates to the highest possible price similar to Yahoo, famous for attracting major advertising rates.

"Social media gets all these ad impressions but not necessarily with the dollars," said Colin Gillis, analyst at Canaccord Adams. The cost per thousand (CPM) page views are significantly lower than that of Yahoo, said.

A MySpace executive said they are closing the gap with rivals such as Yahoo, AOL Time Warner and Microsoft Corp's MSN after the renovation of its home page in June, which has attracted sponsors like Sprite renowned and Wendy's.

"Our CPM has grown significantly," said Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace, on the surging growth in June. "Category by category, year after year, we grow in double digits," celebrated.

According to comScore data for advertising impressions, June was the first month that Fox Interactive beats Yahoo, whose views of advertising fell nearly 12 percent since May.

While it may be too early to conclude definitively that MySpace surpassed Yahoo, comScore data shows that Yahoo's stock on the market for displays has trended downward since July 2007.

Yahoo questioned comScore's measurement methodology.

"We believe that there may be problems with the measurement that could be distorting to Yahoo and we are reviewing comScore's methodology and working with them to solve these problems," said a statement by spokesman Adam Grossberg.