Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index October 2004 Data: Content Leads All Activities in Share of Time Online; Commerce and Search Register Month-Over-Month Increases

Business Wire, Nov 18, 2004

NEW YORK -- The Online Publishers Association (OPA) today released the Internet Activity Index (IAI) for October 2004. The Index divides and tracks Internet usage among four distinct activities - Content, Communications, Commerce and Search - and was produced in conjunction with Nielsen//NetRatings. It is published monthly by the OPA. The October 2004 data revealed that Content held its position as the leading online activity as measured by share of time spent online.

In October, 40.2% of time spent online was spent on Content, followed by Communications at 39.8%, Commerce at 15.8% and Search at 4.3%. Commerce and Search were the only two categories to register increases in share of time spent in October 2004 versus September 2004, from 15.2% to 15.8% and from 4.0% to 4.3%, respectively.

Year-over-year data shows that Content's share of time grew 4.9 percentage points, from 35.3% in October 2003 to 40.2% in October 2004. Share of time spent on Search grew 1.3 percentage points over that same time period, while share of time spent on Commerce and Communications activity declined .7 percentage points and 5.4 percentage points, respectively.

"Long-term trends continue to indicate that Content will be the dominant source of people's time online," said Michael Zimbalist, president of the Online Publishers Association. "We believe this shift is a result of three primary factors: growth of broadband, more innovative product offerings from content providers, and the coming of age of a generation that increasingly turns to the Internet as their primary source of news, information and entertainment.

"The October Commerce data shows that the holiday shopping season is underway and we suspect that the increase in share of time spent on Search this month is due, in part, to the launch of Google's desktop search feature and the recent redesign of the Yahoo! site."

The Internet Activity Index is based on the proprietary clickstream database that underlies Nielsen//NetRatings' NetView service. Popular online offerings were divided into Communications, Commerce, Content, and Search segments based on an objective approach developed by both the OPA and Nielsen//NetRatings. Nielsen//NetRatings calculates usage metrics for each segment using the same algorithms that are used for all NetView-based custom analytics offerings.

The full results of the Internet Activity Index, along with historical data on a variety of metrics for each category, can be found at the Online Publishers Association Web site at http://www.online-publishers.org/iai.> About the Online Publishers Association

Founded in June 2001, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) is an industry trade organization whose mission is to advance the interests of high-quality online publishers before the advertising community, the press, the government and the public. Members of OPA represent the standards in Internet publishing with respect to editorial quality and integrity, credibility and accountability. OPA member sites have a combined, unduplicated reach of 110.5 million visitors, or 73 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience (Source: comScore Media Metrix, February 2004 combined home/work/university data). For more information about the Online Publishers Association, visit www.online-publishers.org.

This press release may be found at http://www.online-publishers.org