Small and medium advertisers are leading the charge with display ads

In Q4 of 2012, display advertising was up almost 6% year-over-year, and the big boys weren't leading the pack.

In a new study by comScore, evidence points to small and mid-sized advertisers and marketers driving the growth in the market. The number of advertisers delivering 1-3 billion impressions per quarter grew from 99 in Q4 2011 to 103 in Q4 2012. Whereas the number of advertisers supplying more than 10 billion impressions per quarter fell from 9 to 5 for the same period.

The largest web advertisers for this period were:

1. AT&T with almost 105 billion impressions
2. Microsoft (47.4 billion)
3. Experian Interactive (45.1 billion)
4. Verizon (40.5 billion)
5. State Farm (35.7 billion).

In terms of advertiser categories the largest categories were online media advertisers delivered the largest number (453 billion), followed by retail (433 billion) and finance (422 billion) advertisers.

SOURCE: comScore