Search engine use among active Internet users spiked to 114.5 million unique users or 39 percent of Americans in January, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The Internet researcher's report, out today, said that each user spent nearly 40 minutes using search engines during the month. "Search engines continue to be the primary tool people use to navigate the Web," said Jason Levin, analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "With the big search players having recently updated their search capabilities, Internet users should expect to find even better search results from the major search engines in the near future." Last week, Yahoo! launched its search capability, a mix of technologies built with assets accrued from its acquisitions of Overture Services, Inktomi, and others. The top five search venues in January were Google (59 million visitors), Yahoo! Search (46 million), MSN Search (45 million), AOL Search (23 million), and Ask Jeeves (13 million). Nielsen also found that consumers relied heavily on search engines during the 2003 holiday shopping season. Thirty-six percent of those polled said they'd used Google during the shopping fest, while 25 percent used Yahoo! Search. Those numbers decline markedly for the other providers, with 14 percent of respondents citing MSN Search, and five percent for both AOL and Ask Jeeves. Nielsen//NetRatings conducted the poll in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Harris Interactive. "Online shoppers have turned to search engines not only to find stores but to comparison shop," said Levin. "Search engines are quickly becoming the first destination for online shoppers, and we expect that trend to continue through 2004."
The Online Publishers Association today named Larry Kramer, who is chairman and CEO of CBS MarketWatch.com, as its new chairman. Kramer, who served as the OPA's vice chairman and was also a founding member of the association, succeeds Christopher Schroeder, the former CEO-publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. Schroeder stepped down from the post in January after he was named VP-strategy for the Washington Post Co., WPNI's parent company. "2004 looks to be a promising year for the online publishing industry, and I'm excited to offer my insight to the OPA's efforts as chairman," Kramer says. "I was a founding board member of the OPA, and we spent those first few years building a respected and meaningful organization around the idea of proprietary online content." In his new role, Kramer says he will continue to evangelize the role of online media within the overall media mix, and advance the OPA's research efforts: "We'll take an even broader role in highlighting the value of the Internet and highlighting the behavior of people on the Internet. Advertisers have always ultimately gone where the viewer is," he says. During the past year, the OPA has conducted original research into the online at-work audience, consumer loyalty to online brands, and ethnographic studies into consumers' attitudes about online media. The OPA is on the verge of issuing a detailed study of 18-to-34-year-olds. "It's in our interest to get as much interest as possible on behavioral shifts so that we are able to establish a more accurate description of how people are using the Internet," Kramer says, adding: "It matters to advertisers. . . We want to bring the advertising world up to speed on the various things available to them on the Web, the technological improvements, and the expectations they can have for advertising." Kramer says that this year, the OPA will focus on spam initiatives and other legal issues surrounding commercial opt-in emails, create a task force to assess video on the Web, and work on more case studies. "I'm also very interested in the alternative ways people are going to access the Internet," Kramer says, given MarketWatch's position as an online financial and business destination. Apart from Kramer's new role, Debora Wilson, chief operating officer of The Weather Channel and weather.com, will serve as OPA treasurer, and Riley McDonough, VP-sales and marketing for the ESPN Internet Group, is the group's secretary. Separately, the OPA announced new members. They are: ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, CNN.com, iVillage, Jupiter Media, MTV.com, and Reuters. "We are thrilled to welcome such an excellent group of new members and associates to our association," says Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the OPA. "With each new member, we gain incredible insight and limitless ideas that enable us to support, advance, and accelerate the business of online publishing."