Google, DoubleClick dominate ad networks, but different industries see different results
Published May 13, 2010
When it comes to ad servers, not all networks are created equal.
A recent report from anti-piracy solutions firm Attributor found that Google and DoubleClick "overwhelmingly dominate the market" for ad servers, representing more a combined 65 percent of the market share. This is a 9 percent increase over their share in December 2008.
Google alone holds 36.6 percent of the market share, while DoubleClick represents 29.4 percent. AOL came in third with 7.2 percent, followed by AudienceScience with 6.8 percent.
Yet the findings are not universally applicable. DoubleClick outperformed Google for sites with more than 1 million unique users, while the opposite is true for sites with less than 1 million unique users. When it comes to shopping sites, DoubleClick performed the best, while Google held the lead for blog sites.
Aside from the Google-DoubleClick race, AudienceScience dominated both networks on news sites such as CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com and USAToday.com.
Although ad server metrics can be a valuable tool for data-driven marketing professionals to use in their attribution modeling, MediaPost recently noted that they are just "a piece to the attribution puzzle," and should be used in combination with other metrics.