• by Wayne Friedman , July 14, 2010

By at least one measurement, NBC continues to maintain the top spot when it comes to Internet activity.

For the first half of the year, NBC.com averaged 8.32 million visitors, according to Internet measuring companies comScore Media Metrix and Omniture.

ABC.com was next at 7.1 million, followed by CBS at 5.7 million, Fox.com at 4.9 million, and CWTV.com at 2.7 million.

NBC says some of this strong activity continues with its summer programming. For the first five weeks, "America's Got Talent" improved 19% to 3.7 million full-episode streams. Also, the first five weeks of "Last Comic Standing" rose 144% to 1.3 million full-episode streams.

But unlike traditional TV metrics -- where the lone ratings currency for advertisers comes from just one company, Nielsen -- there are other metrics advertisers consider for the Internet. In addition to comScore and Omniture measuring Internet activity, there is Nielsen's own VideoCensus report.

For example, for many months in the first half of the year, Nielsen had ABC in the top spot among various measurements: unique visitors, pages views, etc. The difference is that Nielsen's VideoCensus measures only videos. But Omniture and comScore Media Metrix count other non-video content as well. Nielsen also has NetViews, which measures non-video content.