
Google’s focus on the display space shows no signs of weakening, as it continues to invest in its range of display ad products and technologies. That stack gives it unparalleled insight into the overall state of the display ad market, from which it released some data today designed to address some of the assumptions often bandied about the industry.
First up: Banner ads aren’t dead yet, but small ones are. 468×60 units — once the workhorse of online advertising — now account for fewer than 3 percent of all display ad impressions. Meanwhile the “three musketeers” — the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper — represent almost 80 percent of total impressions.
Next, mobile and video continues to gain traction. Growth in mobile Web impressions on Google’s ad exchange and AdSense network increased 250 percent between the third and fourth quarters of 2011, while video ad impressions increased almost 70 percent across its Dart for Publishers ad serving technology over the same period.
In terms of geography, Google said it still serves the vast majority of its impressions in the U.S., but is seeing strong growth, unsurprisingly, from smaller markets in the Middle East and Africa. It’s also seeing strong representation from China and Japan, it said, which now represent 11 percent and 6 percent of the display impressions it serves, respectively.
Finally, it pointed out that sites in the shopping, sports and auto category saw the strongest impression growth in 2011, while 15 of its 25 publisher verticals displayed double-digit growth, overall.
More in Media

The Rundown: Recapping Digiday’s four onstage interviews during DMexco 2025
The fireside chats touched on a variety of top-of-mind topics for the media and marketing execs in attendance.

Why The Hill credits growing engagement for its social traffic bump
After experiencing a bump in Facebook referral traffic earlier this year, The Hill’s social traffic is continuing to climb in the second half of 2025. Year-over-year between September 2024 and September 2025, The Hill’s overall social traffic increased by 20 percent, according to The Hill deputy managing editor of audience and content strategy Sarakshi Rai, who shared the figure during a talk at this week’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami.

Inside Bloomberg Media’s survival guide for the AI era
The business news publisher has yet to sign a content licensing deal with an AI company, but it did recently implement a new AI-powered on-site search engine.