• by Masha Geller , October 12, 2001

The doldrums of summer seem to have passed and here are some numbers to prove that the web is full of activity these days.

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that anticipation of the third season of reality TV show "Survivor" drove traffic to the Entertainment Weekly website following the October 4th "Survivor" television special which introduced the members of this season's cast. EW.com skyrocketed 158% during the week ending October 7, as surfers logged on at-home to get bios and facts about the new cast members before the show's October 11th premiere.

According to another web traffic tracker Jupiter Media Metrix, elsewhere on the web there seems to be a battle brewing in the baby category. For the week ending Oct. 7 average daily unique visitors to Babiesrus increased 59% to 78,000, and Babycenter.com increased 14% to 148,000.

Sites in the discount retailing genre also had significant increases in average daily unique visitors: Smartbargains.com increased 373% to 123,000; Samsclub.com increased 103% to 79,000; Bargainandhaggle.com increased 84% to 162,000; Costco.com increased 64% to 82,000; Half.com increased 48% to 690,000; and Dealtime.com increased 9% to 197,000.

Also, JMM says that with the Major League Baseball playoffs underway, average daily unique visitors to MLB.com rose 24% to 342,000. Meanwhile, the NHL season is just getting underway and traffic to the NHL Network has increased accordingly - average daily unique visitors increased 24% to 115,000. Sports information site CNNSI.com also increased in traffic - average daily unique visitors were up 25% to 459,000.

Marketers of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) continue to experiment on the Web with varied levels of success. For example, average daily unique visitor traffic to Campbell Soup's Chunky.com increased 73% to 247,000. Proctor & Gamble's product portal, Homemadesimple.com, jumped 78% to 103,000. In addition, average daily unique visitors to CPG coupon site Nesteggz.com, a product of Nuvisio, spiked 129% to 96,000.