• by September 29, 2000

By now it's pretty clear that the gold medal for attracting eyeballs to the Sydney Olympiad and its sponsors is not television. It's the web. At least that's what both Media Metrix and Nielsen//NetRatings numbers indicate.

Today, Media Metrix announced that NBCOlympics.com was the Top Gainer for the week ending September 24, 2000 with 544,000 average daily unique visitors. Throughout the Games, traffic to NBCOlympics.com as well as Olympics.com also increased substantially week over week. Traffic continued to increase from the week of the opening ceremony through the first full week of the Games, with NBCOlympics.com and Olympics.com increasing 104.6% to 544,000 average daily unique visitors and 309.4% to 416,000 average daily unique visitors, respectively.

The Internet ratings report for the same week from Nielsen//NetRatings, also shows that Olympics on the Web has captivated office workers during the first week of the Games.

Traffic to NBCOlympics.com soared 84% to more than 1.1 million unique visitors at work for the week ending September 24, compared to approximately 600,000 the previous week, making the online arm of NBC's Olympics coverage the fastest growing site for the week at work. Olympics.com also enjoyed golden victory, as site traffic jumped more than 73% to 663,000 unique visitors for the U.S. work audience. Olympics.com finished as the sixth fastest growing site at work.

Additionally, NetRatings found that more men surfed both sites than women, with a gender split of about 65% men and 35% women. More than a quarter of site visitors checked out the broadcast schedule, showing that the web served as an informational resource for those who wanted to watch the TV broadcast, even after they knew the competition results.

Just something to keep in mind as you decide where to run your ads next time a big sporting event rolls around.