Yahoo Inc has lost its lead of the US market for online display advertising to MySpace and its parent company News Corp's Fox Interactive Media and MySpace, new industry data shows.
Fox Interactive's collection of sites, led by MySpace, drew 56.8 million advertising views in June, compared with Yahoo's group of sites which had 53.1 million, according to data from Web audience measurement firm comScore this week.
But while the statistic marks the rapid growth of MySpace in terms of advertising viewership, analysts say the social network site has struggled to draw top-dollar ad rates relative to Yahoo, known for attracting premium advertising rates.
"Social media gets all these ad impressions but not necessarily get the dollars," said Colin Gillis, analyst at Canaccord Adams. MySpace's cost per thousand (CPM) page views are significantly lower than that of Yahoo, he said.
A MySpace executive said it is closing the gap with rivals such as Yahoo, Time Warner's AOL and Microsoft Corp's MSN after the revamp of its home page in June, which has drawn in big-name sponsors such as Sprint and Wendy's.
"Our CPMs have grown significantly," Jeff Berman, MySpace president of sales and marketing, said of June's growth spike. "Category by category, year over year, we're up double digits."
According to comScore data for advertising impressions, June was the first month that Fox Interactive has surpassed Yahoo, which saw ad views dip by around 12 percent from May.