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Combined, the three sectors spent nearly $228 million USD on advertisements appearing online, and comprised half of the sales in June 2005.

Nielsen/NetRatings states that an estimated $456 million USD was spent for online advertising in June 2005. Half of that total came from financial services firms, Web media, and online goods and services sellers.

Financial services spent about $80 million, led by expenditures by LowerMyBills.com, which is owned by bulk-emailer Experian. Online job site Monster.com led the Web media category and its $75 million in spending.

Classmates.com and Juno/NetZero owner United Online led the retail category, which spent a total of $73 million for June 2005. Telecoms and travel spent $43 million and $33 million respectively.

"Online retailers have boosted their online advertising spending by a significant 77 percent, which is impressive to note because they are also one of the top spenders," said Gerry Davidson, senior media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Among brands, Yahoo! had a combined home and work audience of over 99 million people, followed by Microsoft, MSN, and Google. Properties owned by Microsoft garnered over 110 million combined visitors for June, followed by Time Warner, Yahoo!, Google, and eBay.

Nielsen/NetRatings says that according to its AdRelevance data, United Online rendered over 3.7 billion ad impressions for June, followed closely by VoIP provider Vonage. Apollo Group, the parent of the online education presence University of Phoenix, was third with 2.9 billion impressions.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.