Comscore MMX Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for August 2008

Politics and Olympics Drive Web Traffic during the Month

Visitors Increase to Education and Retail Sites as Students go Back to School

RESTON, VA, September 16, 2008 – Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at the top online properties for August 2008 based on data from the Comscore MMX service. The Olympics and the U.S. Presidential campaign were the main drivers of Internet activity during the month, resulting in strong gains at politics, sports, news and humor sites. The start of another academic year resulted in growth at education and retail – consumer goods sites.

“The Olympics dominated the headlines in August, and Americans’ Internet activity reflected their keen interest in their country’s performance at the games,” commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of Comscore MMX. “With the time difference between Beijing and the U.S. creating a substantial lag between many of the live events and their subsequent national broadcast, the Internet was especially critical in keeping Americans current with the latest event results and medal counts.”

Political Party Conventions and Campaign Activity Drive Traffic to Political Sites

As the Democratic National Convention closed out the month of August with the Republican National Convention following on its heels, the politics category surged 33 percent to 14 million visitors as many Americans directed their attention to this historic Presidential contest. The category, which was the fastest growing for the month, was led by BarackObama.com with nearly 4 million visitors (up 113 percent from July), while JohnMcCain.com climbed 108 percent to 1.4 million visitors.
The entertainment - humor category also witnessed strong gains this month, growing 12 percent to 16.5 million visitors, in part due to the success of a viral comedy video relating to the presidential race. Comedic video site FunnyOrDie.com jumped 256 percent to 2.4 million visitors as people flocked to the site to view Paris Hilton’s video response to John McCain’s ‘Celebrity’ ad, which featured Hilton as a way of deriding Senator Obama’s celebrity status.

Olympics Drives Surge at Sports and News Sites

The Olympics was a significant driver of Internet activity during the month of August, with official Olympic site Beijing2008.cn capturing the top spot among the fastest-gaining properties during the month. The site realized a twelvefold increase in August with 5.8 million visitors.

The Olympics generated the most substantial gains in the sports and news categories. Sports grew 26 percent to more than 93 million visitors in August, led by Yahoo! Sports with 38.5 million visitors (up 76 percent), NBC Sports with 23.8 million visitors (up 740 percent) and ESPN with 22 million visitors (up 23 percent). The category also benefitted from pre-season interest in the 2008 NFL season.
Meanwhile, general news sites grew 10 percent to 105 million visitors. MSNBC led the category with 44.5 million visitors (up 53 percent), with much of the site’s increase due to the flood of visitors to NBCOlympics.com site. Yahoo! News, ranking second in the category, grew 15 percent to 44.3 million visitors, while CNN ranked third with more than 32 million visitors (up 12 percent).

Back to School Season Prompts Growth to Education and Consumer Goods Sites

August marked the beginning of another school year for many students, resulting in gains to education and retail – consumer goods sites. Education sites grew 9 percent to 96 million visitors, with each of the five most-visited sites in the category experiencing double-digit growth during the month. The category was led by Dictionary.com with 10.9 million visitors (up 24 percent), followed by Pearson Education with 9.9 million visitors (up 30 percent) and Answers.com with 8.4 million visitors (up 26 percent).

The retail – consumer goods category grew 9 percent to 24.6 million visitors, propelled by large increases at several office supplies sites. Category-leader Staples.com Sites jumped 22 percent to nearly 8 million visitors, while Office Depot increased 10 percent to 5.3 million visitors and OfficeMax increased 39 percent to 2.6 million visitors.

Top 50 Properties

Google Sites maintained its #1 position in the Top Properties ranking, reaching 144.7 million Americans in August, while Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 141.5 million visitors and Microsoft Sites ranked third with 123.5 million visitors. Target Corporation and Bank of America both climbed three spots this month with Target rising to #22 with 30.5 million visitors and Bank of America reaching #30 with 25.6 million visitors. The beginning of football season helped propel ESPN seven positions to #36 with more than 22 million visitors. Answers.com Sites (#45), WorldNow – ABC Owned Sites (#47) and NBC Universal (#50) each entered the rankings this month.

Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking

Platform-A, which includes Advertising.com, Quigo and other ad networks, led the Ad Focus ranking in August, reaching 90 percent of the nearly 189 million Americans online. Yahoo! Network captured the second spot reaching 162.2 million visitors. Google Ad Network followed in third position reaching 156.4 million Americans.

TABLE 1

*Ranking based on the top 250 properties in August 2008

TABLE 2

TABLE 3

TABLE 4

Reach % denotes the percentage of the total Internet population that viewed a particular entity at least once in August. For instance, Yahoo! was seen by 74 percent of the 189 million Internet users in August.

* Entity has assigned some portion of traffic to other syndicated entities.

** Denotes an advertising network.

† The Platform A ad network is an aggregation of ad servers used by the following individual advertising network entities: Advertising.com, Tacoda, AOL, Quigo and Userplane.

†† Entities followed with a “Potential Reach” notation are custom entities representing the number of unduplicated visitors to sites with which the specified ad network has contracted to deliver advertising. Unlike entities marked as advertising networks (**), those denoted with “Potential Reach” do not represent the total number of visitors actually reached by ads via the ad network.

About Comscore MMX
Comscore MMX provides industry-leading Internet audience measurement services that report details of online media usage, visitor demographics and online buying power for the home, work and university audiences across local U.S. markets and across the globe. Comscore MMX reports are used by financial analysts, advertising agencies, publishers and marketers. Comscore MMX syndicated ratings are based on industry-sanctioned sampling methodologies.

About Comscore
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