• by Masha Geller , August 10, 2001

The Jupiter show is over and hopefully we're all one step closer to accepting the fact that the Internet is an advertising medium. No ifs, ands or buts about it, so stop worrying. The net isn't going anywhere and we're all still in charge of making it succeed. In the coming weeks, we'll profile some of the exhibitors and speakers at the show, so stay tuned, but for today, here's the newest Internet Traffic Report out of comScore Networks and Diameter, which shines some light on what U.S. web surfers have been doing this summer.

The Report reveals that July U.S. Internet usage was at its lowest level since March. Overall traffic from U.S. visitors, including the home, work and college/university audience segments, declined by 1.9% from June to July, just after a 3% drop from May to June that was largely driven by a seasonal usage decline in the college/university segment.

Interestingly, the U.S. Work segment - now representing more than 52 million visitors and almost 42% of all U.S. on-line users in July -- has clearly emerged as an attractive component of U.S. traffic.

Not surprisingly, entertainment websites were the most visited category for the month of July. According to the report, more than 72% of Web users visited an entertainment site in July, making this the most visited category on the Internet during the month.

"U.S. Internet traffic seems to have slowed over the past few months in terms of growth in unique users, although there are still pockets of growth occurring at specific sites and within certain audience segments," said Gian Fulgoni, Chairman of comScore. "As overall growth in the number of unique U.S. Internet users slows however, companies will need to develop a deeper level of understanding of the behavior of online consumers if they are to successfully exploit the many opportunities that exist to leverage the use of the Internet as a marketing medium."

Worldwide Internet traffic remained stable in July, with 296.4 million visitors using the Web, from 296.5 million visitors in June, which represents the lowest level of usage in the past four months. However, traffic from non-U.S. visitors increased by 1.2% from June to July, reflecting the continued development of the Internet on a worldwide basis.