Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

Fuel Watch - Profiling Bargain Hunters Online

2008-04-22T00:01:44Z

The announcement last week of an Australian national scheme that will publish fuel prices online for the next day has highlighted the impact of empowering consumers with time-sensitive information. Quite some time ago I wrote about financial services and information asymmetry, specifically the power of the Internet to shift information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not, and believe that a similar principle applies here.

On the fuel watch debate, Melbourne Business School Professor of Management, Joshua Gans writes in this post, Is Ignorance Good? that there are two kinds of consumers when it comes to purchasing fuel, namely 'fillers' and 'hunters':

"Fillers don't know or have the time to search for the best petrol deals. They fill up when they need to. On the other hand, hunters are shrewd individuals who what to pay less for petrol."

The FuelWatch WA website has been cited as a successful precedent to the nation-wide scheme, so I decided to use our Lifestyle Demographics tool to profile who these 'hunters' might be.

There are two predominant household groups likely to visit FuelWatch WA - Hitwise Lifestyle Mosaic Groups, 'Privileged Prosperity', the most affluent families in the most desirable locations; and 'Family Challenge', mixed families with stretched budgets in outer suburbs. Both 'Privileged Prosperity' and 'Family Challenge' households indexed above 190 in visits to Fuel Watch WA for the 12 weeks ending 12 April 2008.

It's interesting that the households that spend time researching the best petrol deals are from such contrasting socio-economic backgrounds - financial 'smarts' and necessity appears to motivate the bargain hunter. When the national website is launched later this year, we'll see if the audience profile evens out to represent more consumers as some predict, or whether we'll see the same types of households scouting fuel prices online.

What are Kiwis Doing Online? Global Benchmarks

2008-03-20T03:13:23Z

I wrote a month ago about the leading industries that Australians were visiting online. Taking another online snapshot, this time of the New Zealand market, we've determined that Kiwis are more likely to visit News & Media, Portal (Frontpages) and Travel than their counterparts in Australia and the US (week ending 15 March 2008). Also interesting to note that New Zealand visits to online shopping has surpassed the Australian market. Here's a top-line summary:

* News & Media - accounted for 6.7% share of visits the week ending 15 March 2008. Online News & Media consumption was high compared to the Australian and US markets, which accounted for 6.12% and 3.9% market share respectively. The New Zealand Herald was the top news player with 12.4% share of visits, followed by Fairfax's Stuff, with 10.06% share of visits for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Portal Frontpages – attracted more visits in the New Zealand market with 5.78% share of Internet visits, than in Australia and US, with market shares of 4.43% and 5.55% respectively. The leading Portal Frontpage was MSN New Zealand accounting for 38.31% share of visits, followed by Yahoo!xtra with 15.98% for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Travel – was a leading industry in the New Zealand market, accounting for 2.67% share of visits, compared to 2.5% in Australia and 2.19% in the US. New Zealand Travel visits for the week ending 15 March 2008 were also higher than the peak online travel season in the US market in 2007, which recorded 2.2% share, week ending 14 July 2007. Leading travel players were Air New Zealand (17.65% share), Wises Maps (3.83%) and Google Maps New Zealand (2.59%) for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Shopping & Classifieds – accounted for 7.18% market share of visits the week ending 15 March 2008, significantly less than the US market with 9.7%, but ahead of the Australian market with 5.73%. US benchmarks indicate that there is potential for improved performance by vendors in the retail sector to increase online engagement. This is further highlighted by the fact that 28.3% of New Zealand visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites were directed to overseas websites suggesting local inventory opportunities. TradeMe was the leading website in the Shopping & Classifieds industry with a massive 48.4% share for the week ending 15 March 2008.

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Underbelly vs. So You Think You Can Dance

2008-03-05T04:25:33Z

With the 2008 TV ratings season well and truly started, Australian online searches for viewers' favourite shows have surged. While the new season officially kicked off on February 10, there were increased searches for 'So You Think You Can Dance', the Network Ten talent contest, week ending 9 February 2008, indicating successful marketing leading up to the program.

Nine Network's Melbourne crime drama, 'Underbelly' received a huge spike in searches week ending 16 February 2008, partly related to the court order that banned its screening in Victoria. Underbelly has since received higher volume of search variations than So You Think You Can Dance. The below figure charts search variations for TV programs on Channel 7, Nine Network and Network Ten.

A quick look at the TV ratings over at OzTAM indicates that So You Think You Can Dance attracted more viewers than Underbelly between 17 February and 23 February 2008, contrary to our search data. There is a fairly simple explanation however, with the broadcast ban on Underbelly prompting viewers to search for episodes online instead. A Hitwise Search Term Report on the term 'underbelly' indicates a substantial volume of searches for torrents and downloads.

The likelihood that it was Victorian users seeking to download episodes of Underbelly is reflected by our Demographics data. The Traffic Breakdown chart shows that 39.53% of traffic to Underbelly came from Victoria. As Victoria represents 23.91% of the online population, the index of Underbelly's representation in this State is 165.36.

Social Graph – Implications for Marketers

2008-03-04T01:22:26Z

Last week we released our Asia Pacific Social Networking Report – I thought I would share an excerpt that discusses the importance of the social graph for marketers in 2008.

The social graph is a notion that refers to the data that expresses an individual: their consumer preferences and behaviours; and their various social networks, including friends, family, professional associates and online contacts. The social graph will be an important point of debate in 2008 as it poses two key problems: for users there is the challenge of managing multiple networks – including logins and importing/exporting personal data. For social network owners, there is the commercial decision of how they should participate in an 'open Internet', defined by platforms that permit data sharing between networks.

While these may be technology or end-user considerations, marketers will need to watch this issue closely as it could impact how they choose to work with social networks. This could involve developing widgets that are compatible for multiple social networks, or applications that draw in data from the full spectrum of a user's social graph. Other potential avenues for marketers include targeting websites that facilitate management of user data sources, such as Plaxo.

The movement of Australian Internet users across multiple social networks is highlighted by the figure below. The downstream traffic from each of the major social networks to other industry players demonstrates a wide dispersal of traffic.

* Of the traffic that MySpace, Facebook and Bebo send to other Social Networks, more than 89% of their downstream traffic is sent to second-tier players. While the major players hold concentrated market share of visits to the Social Networks custom category, there is significant referral traffic to minor networks. This underpins the importance of understanding multiple network loyalties.

* After visiting Facebook or Bebo, most users are likely to visit MySpace. While this is a reflection of the dominance of MySpace in market share of visits, it could also be because MySpace offers additional features to the other networks, such as bands and artists content. Network differentiation is likely to be an important factor in how Social Networks will compete for users.

* Bebo received 2% of downstream traffic from MySpace, compared to 1% from Facebook. This indicates that MySpace and Bebo users could have stronger network 'affinities', with users influencing migratory behaviour across both networks.

Tracking the Flight of the Conchords

2008-02-21T23:47:23Z

I was browsing through our Fast Moving Search Terms report for the News & Media industry to get a sense of what was topical in New Zealand at the moment, and found searches for 'flight of the conchords' and 'grammys' prominent. The Flight of the Conchords, if you haven't heard of them yet, are "New Zealand's fourth most popular digi-folk paradists".

The duo apparently have a strong following in the US off the back of their TV show on the HBO network, and last week won a Grammy award for best comedy album of 2007. This article makes an interesting point that "New Zealanders are ignored in their native land till someone overseas recognises their genius, at which point we rapturously acclaim them as ours".

The below chart goes some way to validating this 'cultural phenomenon': search variations on 'flight of the conchords' certainly peaked in the US during August 2007, but reached their highest point in New Zealand in February this year. Important to note that NZ search variations for 'flight of the conchords' have always outstripped US searches (by a factor of 4.6x at week ending 18/8/07, and 39.3x at week ending 16/2/08), but it took the Grammy Award to really spark mainstream interest in NZ.

It would be interesting to find other examples of where artists have peaked in consumer interest in overseas markets, before gaining local mainstream appeal. For now, here's a further glimpse of where searches for 'flight of the conchords' deliver New Zealand Internet users:

A couple of interesting points to note from this table - YouTube ranks at third position accounting for 11.87% of searches on 'flight of the conchords'. With Google.co.nz powering 77% of searches on the term, it's evident that the universal search results are influencing visits to YouTube; highlighted by the fact that YouTube ranked ahead of visits to HBO Online, the homepage of the Flight of Conchords TV show.

Second point is that MySpace accounted for 2.88% of searches, more than double than Bebo with 1.13%. This is significant because Bebo is the market leader in Social Networking and Forums in New Zealand, accounting for 17.63% share compared to MySpace with 3.67% for the week ending 16 February 2008. While Bebo attracts more visits overall, MySpace in this instance is the preferred channel for finding content related to Flight of the Conchords. Robin makes a similar observation in the UK of the strength of MySpace for promoting bands and artists.

Whatever your preferred channel, I would highly recommend checking out Flight of the Conchords for some quirky kiwi humour.

What are Australians Doing Online? Global Benchmarks

2008-02-21T23:20:46Z

This week we've looked at Hitwise data that provides a snapshot of the leading industries that Australian Internet users visit. The update includes comparisons with major overseas markets, the United States and United Kingdom. Here are some of our findings:

* Banks & Financial Institutions - was a dominant commercial sub-category, accounting for 4.35% market share of visits. This reflects user confidence in conducting financial transactions online. Financial institutions were also competitive in marketing a diverse range of products and services through the online channel in 2007. Australian visits to banking websites outstripped US and UK usage, which recorded 3.59% and 2.35% market share respectively.

* News & Media - accounted for 6.75% share the week ending 9 February 2008, ranking after Social Networking & Forums. Australian online News & Media consumption was high compared to US and UK markets, with 3.97% and 4.63% market share respectively. Growth in referral traffic from Social Networking & Forums was up 48% comparing week ending 10 February 2007 and 9 February 2008. 'Social news' will continue to shape the direction of online media in 2008, with websites such as Technorati, Digg and Newsvine providing a model of how users can interact with news online.

* Education - Reference - was a leading sub-category partly due to the popularity of websites, Bureau of Meteorology and Wikipedia, which ranked 9th and 12th respectively amongst all websites the week ending 9 February 2008. The importance of Wikipedia as a general content source was reflected by the fact that Wikipedia was the 4th most popular website in the downstream traffic of Search Engines for the week ending 9 February 2008. Australian visits to Education - Reference accounted for 2.63% share, higher than US usage (1.62%) and UK usage (1.61%).

* Government – attracted strong usage amongst Australian Internet users compared to overseas markets, accounting for 2.56% share in Australia for the week ending 9 February 2008, compared to 1.52% in US and 0.87% in UK. This metric provides an important benchmark for measuring community engagement with state and federal online initiatives.

On the reverse side, Shopping & Classifieds – accounted for 5.93% market share of visits the week ending 9 February 2008, significantly less than the US and UK, which attracted 9.54% and 9.61% share respectively. Overseas standards indicate that there is potential for improved performance by vendors in the retail sector to increase online engagement. This is further highlighted by the fact that 30% of visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites were directed to overseas websites suggesting local inventory opportunities.

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Microsoft and Yahoo! - Australian Perspective

2008-02-05T23:40:37Z

Media buyer, Harold Mitchell in this article makes some pertinent commentary about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!: "Yahoo's Australian partnerships would make Microsoft's proposed deal problematic." This comment is made in light of the fact that both technology companies have strong relationships with local media networks; i.e. Microsoft and Network Nine (ninemsn) vs Yahoo! and Channel 7 (Yahoo!7).

I've adopted Bill's charts for the Australian market, and given the potential impact of the bid on local publishers, have included News Corporation and Fairfax Digital properties.

You'll see that the combined properties of Microsoft and Yahoo! would account for 23% market share of all Internet visits in Australia, just behind Google at 24.5% for the week ending 2 February 2008. That's a completely different picture from the U.S. market where Microsoft and Yahoo! together would outstrip visits to Google properties by a significant margin.

In the search landscape, Google similarly dominates, accounting for 87.97% of all executed searches in Australia for the four weeks in January 2008 (includes .com and .com.au properties) – while combining executed searches for Yahoo! Search and MSN Search would amount to 10.5% for the same time period. Interesting to observe that between Jan 07 and Jan 08, MSN Search has overtaken Yahoo! Search.

As Bill points out, the combined properties of Microsoft and Yahoo! would have a more significant impact on categories other than Search. The below table lists the top 5 websites in key industries from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Fairfax properties, for the week ending 2 February 2008. You'll see that in Portal Frontpages, the top five Microsoft and Yahoo! domains would account for 90.17%% share for the week ending 2 February 2008; while in Email Services the top four Microsoft and Yahoo! domains would amount to 76.48% share.

For verticals such as Employment and Property in Australia, a Microsoft / Yahoo! merger could complicate syndicated content relationships; for example, Yahoo!7 has relationships with Fairfax properties Domain.com.au and MyCareer.com.au; while ninemsn is syndicated with realestate.com.au and seek.com.au (through PBL).

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Job Searches by Brand, Location, Occupation

2008-01-20T22:52:57Z

January and February are usually busy months in Australia each year for visits to the online Employment industry as users formulate New Year's resolutions and ruminate on career or lifestyle changes. Visits last year peaked during week ending 3 February 2007 with 0.85% share, and the prior year during week ending 14 January 2006 with 1% share.

I thought I'd take a look at how users are researching job opportunities, with a breakdown of the top 200 search variations on 'jobs' by type and market:

• Location, occupation and employer are typically associated with searches for 'jobs' in each market, with brand searches (e.g. recruitment agencies) relatively low.

• Australia had the highest percentage of jobs searches related to employers; several terms indicated an interest in state government employment.

• UK had the highest percentage of searches related to location and brand. There were a number of searches for jobs in places outside of London, such as Kent and Cornwall; 's1 jobs', a Scottish agency, was the leading branded search.

• US had the highest percentage of generic searches with several queries related to working from home.

Delving into Australian searches gives an indication of which brands are performing strongly and searches that should be prioritised in SEO and PPC campaigns:

* The leading brand variation was on 'jobs' was 'seek jobs'. Seek Australia indeed received the highest portion of search traffic on the term 'jobs' accounting for 35.5% of traffic.
* Leading domestic destinations for employment included 'perth jobs' and 'sunshine coast jobs', while 'uk jobs' and 'dubai jobs' were popular offshore locations. International variations comprised 14% of jobs searches, on par with the UK, but ahead of US searches with 2%.
* 'mining jobs' was the second most popular occupation variation, highlighting that job seekers are still seeking to benefit from the mining boom.

One caveat about this analysis is that searches for 'jobs' could be from users of a certain socio-economic status. Search variations on 'careers' for example bring up a number of professional employers; but are not, due to semantics, typically associated with geographical locations. Let me know if you think there are any other employment search terms worth investigating.

Post Holiday Shopping Wrap-Up

2008-01-14T03:07:01Z

Here are a few summary points on Australian consumer behaviour online during the 2007 holiday shopping period:

* Retail sectors that performed that performed strongly online during the Christmas 2007 period included Appliances & Electronics, Books, Music and Video & Games, experiencing substantial increases upwards of 30% during the last quarter of 2007.

* Visits to the Department Stores online industry were also solid, increasing in category share by 42% between weeks ending 6 October 2007 and 15 December 2007. This compares to 26% growth within the same time period in 2006.

* Shopping & Classifieds website visits peaked in the holiday shopping season during the week ending 1 December 2007. This compared to week ending 25 November 2006 the prior year confirming that the optimum time for reaching consumers remains between late November and early December.

* Searches for 'boxing day sales' spiked dramatically during the week ending 29 December 2007, with the News & Media industry capturing 19.6% of related search traffic, compared to 8.03% for Shopping & Classifieds websites.

* Searches for 'digital photo frames' spiked during the week ending 15 December 2007; almost triple the volume of searches compared to the same time last year.

* The strong growth in music visits was due to Apple iTunes, which experienced a year-on-year increase of 15%, comparing weeks ending 30 December 2006 and 29 December 2007. New users comprised 72% of visits to the Apple iTunes website for the week ending 29 December 2007, suggesting that recipients of iPods on Christmas day were eager to logon and download media for their new gifts.

* Pure-play shopping websites, DealsDirect.com.au, oo.com.au and Lasoo.com.au had a strong impact on driving growth to the online Department Stores industry during early to mid December, as consumers made allowances for shipping times; while Kmart, Big W and Myer enjoyed significant gains peaking week ending 29 December 2007, enjoying last-minute and post Christmas sales visits.

Demand for Online Money-Management Tools

2007-12-21T05:22:40Z

I recently wrote an article for Online Banking Review, Facebooking Your Finances which talks about the readiness of Australian consumers to adopt financial applications that incorporate web 2.0 features. While visits to websites such as Mint and Wesabe are still to gain traction, there is plenty of evidence in Hitwise that indicates demand for enhanced-financial applications by Australian Internet users. To illustrate, the below table shows the top 10 finance-related search variations on 'calculators':

You'll see a variety of finance products, including 'home loan calculators' and 'superannuation calculators'. Other variations out of a possible 449 terms include, 'retirement', 'savings' and 'budget' calculators.

Several banks and insurance websites offer many of these kinds of tools. We can however illustrate with Hitwise data a significant amount of cross-referral traffic within the Banks & Financial Insitutions category, with 56.53% downstream traffic in November 2007. To put this into context, Travel had a cross-referral rate of 39.5%. This is one indication that users are accessing multiple accounts across different institutions.

The implication is that there is an opportunity to provide web-based tools that feed in financial information across all user accounts. As we're yet to see evidence here of consumers trusting web 2.0 websites with their financial data, yet alone share that information with other users, providing data-enhanced finance tools on trusted institutional websites could be an intermediary step in meeting consumer demand for better money-management tools.

Trifle, Prawn Salad and Apricot Chicken: Gap Analysis

2007-12-20T05:59:11Z

A common topic that comes up at pre-Christmas parties here is what exactly is traditional Aussie fare. While inspecting visits to the Shopping & Classifieds – Grocery & Alcohol industry, which surged by 20% comparing w/ending 6 October 07 and 15 December 07, I produced a search gap analysis table between the top two players in the industry, Coles and Woolworths Australia.

After filtering out brand terms, a clear difference between the websites observed was the number of food-related search terms that Coles is receiving – indicating content opportunities for Woolworths to increase their online share:

I then ran another gap analysis report between Coles and the Food and Beverage – Lifestyle and Reference industry, which brought up the names of a number of celebrity chefs, including Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Donna Hay. Producing affiliate content around chefs and culinary publications could be an opportunity for Coles to increase their search-driven traffic.

Sweet-toothed items that were amongst the top 30 terms included, 'christmas cookies', 'rum balls', 'rocky road recipe' and 'pavlova recipe'.

Year-on-year increase of 28% to Alcohol Websites

On a side note, it was also interesting to see that alcohol websites have enjoyed increasing traction amongst Internet users – with a 20-month high observed w/ending 15 December 2007.

While leading player, Dan Murphy's has been a driving force in this growth, increasing its year-on-year share amongst all sites by 54% w/ending 15 December 2007; there has been significant competition from Australian retailers in the wine industry, with fast-movers over the year including Wine Room, The Wine Society, 1st Choice, Australian Wine Selectors, Australian Wine and The Wine Liquidation Centre. Despite a dry climate, consumer demand for wine is high.

Holiday Shopping Fast Movers - Lasoo Leads

2007-12-11T05:44:32Z

Hitwise Fast Moving Search Terms to the Shopping & Classifieds industry reveal which brands and products are top-of-mind amongst consumers, leading up to the holiday shopping season.

New shopping search engine, Lasoo featured as the fastest moving search term to the Shopping & Classifieds industry for the 4 weeks ending 1 December 2007, indicating a successful launch campaign and consumer interest in the service which offers current specials from participating catalogues around Australia. Lasoo ranked 40th overall in the Shopping & Classifieds industry for the week ending 1 December 2007.

Festive items within the top 15 fast moving search terms included 'hampers', 'christmas lights' and 'christmas presents'. Retailers and brands that were top-of-mind included 'angus and robinson', 'crocs', 'target au' and 'oakley sunglasses'.

In the Appliances & Electronics industry, 'JB Hi-Fi Australia' and 'retravision perth' were the fastest moving retailers being searched. 'Nokia 1110i' was the fastest moving product search term, with 'fuji digital camera' ranked at 12th position. White good brands that appeared in the top 15 included 'black and decker australia' and 'westinghouse cooktops'.

Women's clothing featured prominently amongst the top terms to the Apparel & Accessories industry, including 'mini dresses', 'women's swimwear', 'womens shoes', and 'ladies watches'. 'Ugg' also featured at 14th position, representing a global fashion trend.

In the retail Books industry, recipe publication, 'maggies harvest' was the fastest moving search term, while fantasy fiction writer, 'kinley macgregor' was the leading author-related search term. Book retailers in the top 15 included 'angus books', 'bookshops australia' and 'abc shops australia'.

Retailers have the opportunity to intensify their online campaigns as they compete for consumer spend. As Christmas draws nearer, several retail industries have increased in market share significantly, including Department Stores, Books and Appliances & Electronics which grew by 36%, 34% and 28% respectively comparing weeks ending 6 October 2007 and 8 December 2007.

Election and Australian Idol Betting

2007-11-22T02:01:02Z

This weekend there are two big events in Australia - the federal election on Saturday, November 24 and the finale of Australian Idol on Sunday November 25. Whatever your opinion on which event is of more significance, I thought I'd take a look at what the pundits are doing online.

A Hitwise search term suggestion report on the term 'betting' indicates that 'election betting' was the 5th most popular variation (out of 1586 terms), while 'australian idol betting' ranked at #13 for the 4 weeks ending 17 November 2007. To give some indication of the willingness of users to take a punt, a search variation report on 'election' shows that users were more likely to search for 'election betting' at #14 than 'federal election date' at #15 and 'election promises' at #26 out of over 7,000 search terms.

Sportingbet.com.au was the top website to receive traffic on 'election betting' and 'australian idol betting', receiving traffic on 62.79% and 44.35% of searches respectively for the 4 weeks ending 17 November 2007.You'll see in the chart below that while searches for 'australian idol betting' to Sportingbet.com.au increased prior to the finale last year, this year they have been overshadowed by searches for 'election betting' as we come up to the federal election.

I'm a gambling novice myself, finally entering a Melbourne Cup sweep for the first time this year, but I found it interesting that the odds favouring Australian Idol finalist, Matt Corby over Natalie Gauci (1.57 Corby vs 2.35 Gauci) were reflected by Internet searches. As we've used search data as a popularity proxy before, searches for Matt Corby were 3.8 times the volume of Natalie Gauci, w/ending 17 November 2007. Putting in the checks and balances of Bill’s Stacy Keibler correction coefficient, searches on 'Matt Corby' were directly relevant to the contest with the Australian Idol website receiving the bulk of traffic with 26.13%.

As to the federal election, based on volume of searches for 'john howard' vs 'kevin rudd', there is greater uncertainty as to who'll be elected to govern. The nature of searches for candidates during elections can be extremely varied - whether positive or negative.

Fast Moving Retail Categories - Singapore

2007-11-22T01:40:08Z

Apparel & Accessories was the fastest-growing retail sub-sector amongst the Shopping & Classifieds industry in the Singapore market, comparing weeks ending 11 November 2006 and 10 November 2007. Apparel & Accessories websites experienced a 3.03% percentage point increase over a yearly period to account for 9.26% of Shopping & Classifieds visits.

Search data indicates that consumers have a high propensity to search for brand names, with the top 30 search terms to the Apparel & Accessories industry for the 24 weeks ending 10 November 2007 comprised of leading brands. The top 5 search terms were 'coach', 'gucci', 'burberry', 'victoria secret' and 'topshop'. Other local brands within the top 30 included, 'lee hwa' and 'bayb'.

In the Video & Games sector, Play-asia led the sub-category with 11.13% market share for the week ending 10 November 2007, followed by Half.com (7.05%), CD Universe (4.11%), Qisahn.com (3.93%) and GameShop (3.75%). Searches for 'halo 3' spiked by 685% the week ending 29 September 2007 following its launch by Microsoft. While there was a subsequent spike in searches for 'xbox 360', the dominance in searches of 'psp' over other consoles suggests that the psp will be a popular Christmas gift item again this year in Singapore.

Net Communities & Chat is becoming an increasingly important source of traffic to Shopping & Classifieds websites, accounting for 10.21% of visits for the week ending 10 November 2007. This compared to 8.8% for Search Engines, and 6.19% for web-based email. Google Singapore was the top referring website to the Shopping & Classifieds industry for the week ending 10 November 2007, accounting for 18.06% of visits.

Industry statistics for Shopping & Classifieds websites reveals that only 37.2% of visits by Singapore Internet users resulted in a visit to a Singapore website, week ending 10 November 2007. This represents an opportunity for local retailers to capture a larger share of consumer spend by providing local content.

Singapore Online Multimedia Update - Visits up 116%

2007-10-30T06:24:25Z

Visits to the Entertainment - Multimedia industry, which includes animation, music, radio and video production and sharing websites enjoyed a 116% increase comparing September 2006 and September 2007 by Singapore Internet users. Multimedia websites have a strong online presence in Singapore, accounting for 3.5% of all Internet visits week ending 20 October 2007, compared to 1.84% in Australia and 1.26% in the US.

YouTube remained the market leader in the industry during the September 2006 - September 2007 period, enjoying a surge in traffic of 31% between weeks ending 29 September and 20 October 2007 to account for 42.93% of market share in the Entertainment - Multimedia industry. Crunchyroll.com, an online multimedia community that also allows users to share anime, ranked at second position in September 2007 and similarly increased its market share by 30% in the past four weeks, accounting for 7.95% of visits.

Other Entertainment websites that have increased their traction amongst Singapore Internet users over the year include Veoh.com - an Internet television network backed by Time Warner, and Tudou.com - a Chinese online multimedia community. Veoh.com and Tudou.com grew by 129% and 47% respectively between May and September 2007.

Multimedia websites are attractive to advertisers as users are engaged online for substantial time periods. YouTube for example had an average session time of 28 minutes 24 seconds for the week ending 20 October, compared to an All Categories average of 12 minutes 3 seconds.

Movies and Television websites are increasingly reliant on traffic from the Multimedia industry, with upstream traffic referrals accounting for 4.15% and 4.48% respectively. Channel NewsAsia, Fox and Channel 8 Singapore were amongst the top 10 websites visited after the Multimedia industry for the week ending 20 October 2007.