July Internet Ratings From Nielsen//NetRatings; Summer Internet Usage by Teens Jumps 24%

Business Wire, August 16, 1999

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 16, 1999--

The following Internet audience and advertising information is from Nielsen//NetRatings, the Internet measurement service from Nielsen Media Research (NYSE:NMR) and NetRatings, Inc.

The information includes: Top 25 Web Properties, Top 25 Internet Advertisers, Top 10 Banner Ads and Average Web Usage statistics for the month of July 1999.

Noteworthy This Month:

Summertime Online -0-

--   Summer hasn't slowed down the Internet, compared to its
     traditional impact on TV viewing. In fact, the average time spent
     overall increased from 7 hours, 11 minutes to 7 hours, 45
     minutes, an increase of 10% or 33 minutes from May to July.
     Notably, kids and teens have been spending more time online this
     summer. Time spent online by teens (ages 12-17) jumped from an
     average of 5 hours, 42 minutes in May to 7 hours, 4 minutes in
     July, an increase of 24%. Time spent by kids (ages 2-11)
     increased from 1 hour, 40 minutes to 2 hours, 1 minute, a growth
     of 21% during the same period.

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Portals and Vertical Category Growth -0-

--   The unique audience for the Top Ten Portals/Search Engines
     increased by 2.1%, although the overall category remained flat.
     Three search engines that showed significant growth in unique
     audience size from June to July were: Google.com with an 87.6%
     increase, Ask Jeeves with a 38.0% increase, and Looksmart with a
     19.7% growth.

--   Vertical categories showed the following changes from June to
     July: sweepstakes/coupon sites were up 26.0%, online communities
     increased by 7.0% and news sites increased by 6.1%. News sites
     which showed a significant increase in unique audience size from
     June to July were: CBS, 88.4%; New York Times, 73.8%; and CNN,
     35.8%, likely due to the Kennedy plane crash earlier in the
     month.

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Other Sites Rise in Rankings from June to July

Other sites that showed significant increases in unique visitors from June to July include: Blairwitch.com, 1021.6%; Treeloot.com, 357.4%; Onlinepsych.com (an iVillage site), 106.1%; Acmecity (an entertainment communities site), 87.6%; and the Mayo Health Clinic, at 61.0%.

Banner with the Highest Click Rate

The most clicked on banner in July was theglobe.com's ad for free email with a 37.7% click rate, as compared to Micro Warehouse's banner, which had the highest click through rate for June, at 16.4%. -0-

          Nielsen//NetRatings: Top 25 Web Sites by Property
                          Month of July 1999
              Ranking of the Most Visited Web Properties

Property            Unique Audience (000)      Time Per Person (min)
1.  AOL Websites                  34,973                    0:30:40
2.  Yahoo!                        31,022                    1:08:49
3.  MSN                           21,981                    0:57:26
4.  Lycos Network                 19,736                    0:15:51
5.  GO Network                    14,292                    0:22:43
6.  Excite Network                11,711                    0:39:40
7.  Microsoft                     10,391                    0:21:44
8.  Time Warner                    8,982                    0:17:20
9.  Amazon                         8,075                    0:16:43
10. AltaVista                      7,878                    0:12:29
11. Blue Mt. Arts                  7,368                    0:15:59
12. eBay                           5,685                    2:48:29
13. Snap                           5,427                    0:14:28
14. CNET                           4,919                    0:11:29
15. LookSmart                      4,907                    0:09:07
16. Viacom Int'l                   4,704                    0:19:59
17. Real Networks                  4,545                    0:06:07
18. InfoSpace                      4,519                    0:09:48
19. Xoom                           4,248                    0:09:30
20. Broadcast.com                  4,248                    0:10:21
21. About.com                      4,058                    0:05:36
22. CNN                            3,753                    0:20:44
23. AT&T                           3,744                    0:24:05
24. GoTo.com                       3,735                    0:04:21
25. ZDNet                          3,705                    0:14:25

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Example: The data indicate that approximately 3.7 million home Internet users visited at least one of the ZDNet-owned sites during the reporting period, and each person spent, on average, a total of 14.4 minutes at one or more of their sites.

Notes: Rankings are based on audience measurement of people who have access to the Internet from home. A property is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single entity. Reach is a measure of the total unduplicated audience that visits a property. The data are expressed as the percent of the total universe of Internet users who logged onto the Internet at least once during the reporting period. -0-