75% of Americans have internet access

Rethink IT, May, 2004

Nielsen NetRatings reported recently that nearly 75% or 204.3m Americans have access to the internet from home. In comparison, internet access penetration hovered around 66% in February 2003, rising nine percentage points year-over-year.

"In just a handful of years, online access has managed to gain the type of traction that took other media decades to achieve," the company said.

The calculation was done out of the total US population, aged two and over, that lived in a house equipped with a fixed line phone and the survey was done with random calls to US phone numbers.

Nielsen reported that women represent a higher proportion of Web surfers, with 82% or 34.6m women between the ages of 35 and 54 accessing the internet at home. Men in this age group posted an 80% access penetration rate, accounting for nearly 32.4m surfers.

77% of females in the 25-34 age group are web surfers, while 75.6% of males in this age bracket have internet access.

"Women make the majority of purchases and household decisions, so it's no surprise that they are utilizing the internet as a tool for daily living," the company said.

In addition, Nielsen revealed the top advertisers by company for February 2004 which were Microsoft, MSN,Time Warner, Yahoo, Google AOL and eBay, although many of these run ads on sites they own themselves.