Hitwise Press Release

Hitwise Releases Consumer Generated Media Study

Melbourne, 2nd November 2006, Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive service today published, “The Hitwise Australian Consumer Generated Media Report 2006” which focuses on measuring the business applications of websites that encourage user participation. The report provides the landscape of leading social networking, video and photo sharing websites as visited by Australian Internet users.

Some of the key findings include:

• The phenomenal growth in market share of visits to MySpace (www.myspace.com) has also increased its influence on online commerce industries, including Automotive, Banks & Financial Institutions, Shopping & Classifieds and Travel.
  
• Shopping & Classifieds websites received an increased contribution of traffic from MySpace of 448.2% comparing week ending 1 October 2005 and 30 September 2006. In retail, ticketing websites received the greatest contribution to its industry size from MySpace.
  
• YouTube is the dominant video sharing website, accounting for just more than 47% of visits by Australian Internet users for the month of September 2006.
  
• The Hitwise Lifestyle Mosaic audience segmentation profile of MySpace and YouTube matched closely to the online population. This is proof that the use of MySpace and YouTube amongst all segments of Australian Internet users has been ubiquitous.

According to Tessa Court, Hitwise Chief Marketing Officer “With higher penetration rates of various technologies such as digital and video cameras, tagging technologies and broadband Internet access, consumers have an abundant resources to participate in conversations with each other as well as with brands and marketers.  Consumer Generated Media will only increase its presence in the future, and marketers need to embrace this phenomenon in a way that is relevant to their target market.” 

As the Consumer Generated Media Study is not attached here, please contact support.au@hitwise.com to receive the report.

Contact

For further information, or to request an interview, please contact:

James Borg on +61 3 8530 2420 james.borg@hitwise.com

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search, and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends and statistics, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.