Nielsen//NetRatings shows 5.4% in Internet access in June

Dublin - July 24th, 2000 - Nielsen//NetRatings, the fastest growing Internet audience measurement service in the industry, today released its figures for Irish Internet usage during the month of June, revealing that there are now nearly 820,000 Irish people who have access to the Internet from home. Some 42,000 additional people gained access between May and June, an increase of 5.4%. This compares with a growth of 2.1% in the US and just 0.6% in the UK for the same period.

More importantly, the number of active users (people who actually spent time online during the month) also increased, by almost 3% to 354,187 people. (See Table 1).  Nielsen//NetRatings is a service provided by ACNielsen eRatings.com (a venture between ACNielsen Corp., NYSE: ART and NetRatings, Inc., Nasdaq: NTRT), Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc.

Table 1 Irish Internet population: March-June 2000

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June 2000

* All individuals aged 2+ who accessed the Internet from home during the reporting period i.e. usage
** All individuals aged 2+ who have access to the Internet from home during the reporting period i.e. penetration

In addition to the increase in Active users, Irish users are accessing the Internet for a wide variety of reasons, as can be seen in Table 2.

Commenting on the June figures, Karen Kelly, Director of Sales & Marketing for ACNielsen eRatings.com in Ireland said "It is clear that Irish surfers are both interested in and responding to the wide range of Internet categories on the web. There is an enormous breadth of activity, and while the Search engines and portals are leading the way at the moment, there are also significant numbers of people surfing all of the other areas.

Table 2 Top Web Domains by CATEGORY *

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June 2000

* This report sorts domains (consolidations of multiple URLs) by nature of content
** Unique audience is the number of individuals who have gone to the domain at least once in the defined time period

Ms. Kelly added "When surfers go into individual sites, it is of great importance to understand who they are, and what they are really interested in. This will allow the web community (owners, investors, advertisers etc), to effectively develop and evaluate online strategies.  The Nielsen//NetRatings service allows the industry to examine individual sites in great detail, e.g.: male/female split, age profile, what sites people came from, what pages people are viewing, what sites they are going to afterwards, and whether they go on to purchase.

When Internet usage across all categories is examined (see Table 3), search engines msn.com and yahoo.com maintain their popularity with Irish surfers and rank highest in terms of unique audience for the month of June.  The continued dominance of portals msn and Yahoo! shows that Irish users have found value in their one-stop surfing approach, Ms. Kelly said.  However, traffic to the new Irish shopping site - shopindigo.com, which has started to feature in the Nielsen//NetRating data, sheds further light on Irish web activity.

Ms. Kelly noted that just under 14,000 people visited the shopindigo.com site during June. Taking a closer look, 82% of visitors came from www.indigo.ie, while the remaining 12% came from www.eircom.net. Once there, people browsed many different product areas, including electronics (49% of visitors to the site), office supplies (39%), gifts & accessories (37%), hardware (34%), appliances (33%), personal care (28%), etc. During June, visitors were predominantly male (77%), and just under 50% of the total were between 25 and 49 years old, perhaps an indication of pocket power.

Table 3 Most visited Domains for June 2000

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June 2000

Note: A domain is a consolidation of multiple URLs

The Nielsen//NetRatings service
The Nielsen//NetRatings service continues to establish itself in the Irish and global marketplace with the number of corporate clients growing impressively.  Worldwide, the Nielsen//NetRatings panels collectively represent the largest representative media research sample of Internet users in the industry, measuring the Internet experiences of over 150,000 people.