Facebook: Friends, games and 297 billion ad impressions

Facebook.com users in the third quarter ran into more ad impressions -– 297 billion -- than visitors to any other website, according to research firm ComScore Inc.

The social networking site, which also dominates video viewership, grabbed more than 23% of the online display advertising market, up from 9.2% in the same period last year. Yahoo! Sites followed with 140 billion impressions, or 11% of the market.

Overall, online advertising is improving, up 22% from a year ago to 1.3 trillion display ads, excluding video ads, house ads and extremely small ads. The average Internet user in the U.S. saw more than 6,000 display ads in the third quarter.

“As publishers prove the value of online display ad campaigns, digital should continue to carve out a bigger piece of the advertising pie,” said ComScore Senior Vice President Jeff Hackett in a statement.

Top advertisers included AT&T with more than 21 billion impressions, as well as Scottrade and Verizon.

-- Tiffany Hsu