With this month's launch of ComScore Ad Metrix we can for the first time scratch below the surface of the online ad industry and see what's underneath. So here's a snapshot of what the current landscape looks like, who the key players are and some of the specific audience segments being exposed to advertising online.

During April 2009, 35.4m people in the UK were exposed to a total of 58.1bn online display ads. That's an average frequency of more than 1,600 ads per viewer and a reach of 96% of the total UK internet audience. The highest propensity of exposed viewers were 35- 44-year-olds, who accounted for 24% of total ad views, while overall viewership was split 52% male and 48% female. As a reminder to us early adopters that the internet is still a relatively young medium, 66% of all exposed viewers fell into the ABC1 social grade. What we have, therefore, is a vast and affluent audience with a high penetration of exposed viewers.

Those of you familiar with the doom and gloom stories surrounding social networking over the past 18 months might be surprised to learn Facebook is the number-one online display ad publisher - 22m people were exposed to 12.5bn display ads on the social network in April, compared with 3.8bn display ad views on Microsoft sites, and 2.9bn on Ebay, its nearest rivals. This works out to over a fifth (21.6%) of all display ad views online, marking an impressive market share and arguably refuting claims that social networks can't be ad funded.

In terms of advertisers, the top ten is, perhaps unsurprisingly at this stage, dominated by telecoms companies, including O2 (1.1bn ad views), T-Mobile (752m), Orange sites (558m) and Virgin Media (545m). Whether or not this domination will be broken as more ad spend moves online remains to be seen, but the signs seem to be it will.

With Facebook holding such a leading position in the online ad publisher market, the increasing adoption of online video and the fact people are spending longer than ever before on entertainment sites (up 32% year on year to 3.4 hours per person in April 2009), there's definitely a growing audience of susceptible online consumers. Combine this with increased accountability tools and the lay of the online land looks like a great place for advertisers to make their homes right now.

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