New York, NY – March 3, 2008 – The Online Publishers Association (OPA) today announced it has added a Community category to its Internet Activity Index (IAI). The OPA also released new IAI data for the month of January. The exclusive Index, which the OPA launched over four years ago, measures the amount of time consumers spend online each month with Content, Communications, Commerce, Search, and now, Community.
By measuring time spent with key online activities, the IAI offers a unique gauge that helps define engagement and serves as a valuable supplement to other key measures,” said OPA president Pam Horan. “The addition of Community reflects the increasing popularity of sites such as MySpace and Facebook that don’t clearly fit into a single existing IAI category.”
Of course, there are strong elements of community on many News, Sports and other content sites,” Horan continued. “However, since the IAI was launched four years ago, a distinct category of sites has evolved around community. The addition of a Community category allows the IAI to provide an even more accurate, ongoing picture of how much time consumers are spending with key online activities.”
OPA’s IAI, which is compiled by Nielsen Online and is available at www.online-publishers.org, defines Community as Web sites and applications that combine user-generated content with communications in order to foster relationships between individual members and groups of members. Many Community sites are content driven, and they were previously accounted for in the Content category. However Community’s content is largely user-generated, and when merged with communication, creates a specific category of online activity.
Even with Community added, our initial data reflect the same pattern found over the last 15 months,” Horan said. “The bulk of consumers’ online time is spent with Content, well outpacing Communications and Commerce. While Content dominates, Search and Community capture relatively small shares of consumers’ overall online time.”
The OPA today also released IAI results for January 2008, which show that Content accounts for most of consumers’ time online at 43%, while Community ranked fourth at 7.5%.
Category Share of Time Online January 2008
Content 42.7%
Communications 28.7%
Commerce 16.1%
Community 7.5%
Search 5.0%
It is important to note that, because of the addition of the Community category, this data cannot be directly compared to previous IAI data which has historically been provided.
About the OPA Internet Activity Index
The OPA’s Internet Activity Index is derived from a categorization of Web properties accounting for more than 90%, on average, of active Web users and approximately 55% of total usage time (excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains). The IAI is compiled by Nielsen Online and is posted online each month. A full description of the IAI and its methodology is available at www.online-publishers.org.
About the OPA
Founded in June 2001, the Online Publishers Association 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 131.7 million visitors, or 73% percent of the total U.S. Internet audience (Source: comScore Media Metrix, July 2007 combined home/work/university data). For more information, go to www.online-publishers.org.
