• by Masha Geller , February 6, 2003

The concept of daypart targeting online has been a hot debate topic ever since the Online Publishers Association discovered that “daytime is primetime on the web,” but until today, no one really knew what those dayparts were. The OPA has decided to come to the rescue and has partnered with Nielsen//NetRatings to figure out where the natural breaks in the dayparts occur.

The result is a 50-page white paper titled The Existence and Characteristics of Dayparts on the Internet, which concludes that five distinct dayparts exist on the Internet: Early Morning (M-F, 6am-8am), Daytime (M-F, 8am-5pm), Evening (M-F, 5pm-11pm), Late Night (M-F, 11pm-6am), and Weekends (Sat-Sun, all day). The study confirmed that Daytime is the largest daypart (measured in terms of both total audience and total usage minutes), followed by Evenings and Weekends.

OPA research also shows that affluent, working people between the ages of 25-54 make up a larger share of the Daytime audience than any other daypart, while children under the age of 18 are three times more likely to be reached during the Evening and Weekend dayparts.

Somewhat predictably, an examination of usage by site category found that Internet users seek out different types of sites depending on the daypart - Internet utilities, such as search engines/portals, email and chat showed little variation in usage or audience demographics by daypart, whereas content sites exhibited distinct differences in usage and demographics by time of day.

Usage at Entertainment sites was significantly less during dayparts dominated by Work usage (11%), compared to those dominated by Home usage (15-19%). Usage of News & Information sites showed the opposite pattern, peaking during the Early Morning and Daytime, when a majority of usage is from work.

Further analysis shows that certain demographics are easier to reach on particular types of sites during specific dayparts. For example, during Early Morning, 51% of usage of News & Information sites is from Males 25-54, though the demographic represents only 41% of total usage for the daypart.

The full report is available on the OPA website.