• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 21, 2005

Web surfers consumed significantly more news and entertainment Web sites in 2004, even though overall Web pages viewed showed only moderate growth, according to research released Wednesday by Nielsen//NetRatings.

Entertainment saw 119 percent growth in individual Web page consumption across 10 representative Web sites, while unique visitors were down slightly on those sites. Other categories turned up narrower margins. A block of education-related sites saw 72 percent growth in monthly page views per user, while unique visitors were down nearly 10 percent.

Released at the Digital Marketing Conference and Expo in New York, Nielsen's white paper titled, "Integrated Interactive Marketing: Quantifying the Evolution of Online Engagement," emphasizes the growth of consumer engagement online. This increased engagement occurred in spite of the fact that unique visitor growth was down 4 percent and Web pages viewed per person was up only 2 percent for the market as a whole.

Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen//NetRatings' vice president of analytics and the report's author, highlights findings that percentage growth of Web pages consumed per person in both the entertainment, and the education/careers segments were up significantly in 2004. In fact, Buchwalter reports significant increases in the number of pages viewed per person per month across all five categories--news/information, financial services, family/lifestyles, education/careers, and entertainment.

Buchwalter outlined three keys to capturing consumers engagement: "[A]lign with the audience's passion, aggregate 'tribes' of like-minded people and allow them to network, and build faster, more efficient and easier to use mousetraps." By "mousetrap" Buchwalter means a company's Web site, and everything a company can do to improve users' experience with it, from an intuitive interface to a strong brand.

Denoting the growing acceptance of online advertising, 2004 marked the first time the largest online advertiser, SBC Communications, also ranked among the top-10 overall advertisers

The report also discussed other large advertisers that increased their online ad spend at various times throughout the year. Proctor & Gamble, which spent more than $3 billion overall on advertising last year, significantly increased its online spending in July with a campaign that ran on Yahoo! for the launch of Pampers' Feel 'n Learn Diapers. DaimlerChrysler, which grew its total ad spend 34.6 percent to $2.58 billion last year, spent steadily online, with peaks in the spring and fall.