• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 15, 2003

Targeting Dayparts on the Internet

A study by the Online Publishers Association provides evidence to support the conclusion that five distinct dayparts exist on the Internet. Each of these dayparts displays significant differences in usage levels, demographics, and type of content accessed. Media planners can improve the efficiency of their ad buys by weighting them toward those dayparts during which their target audiences predominate.

There are five distinct Internet dayparts characterized by differing usage levels, demographics and type of content accessed:

1. Early morning (M-F 6am – 8am)
2. Daytime (M-F, 8am – 5pm)
3. Evening (M-F, 5pm – 11pm)
4. Late night (M-F, 11pm – 6am)
5. Weekends (Sat-Sun, all day)

A daypart is a consecutive block of time on similar days (weekdays or weekends) during which the size of the audience is homogeneous as is the characterization of the group using the medium.

Key findings of this paper include:

- Daytime is the largest daypart (measured in terms of both total audience and total usage minutes), followed by Evening and Weekends;

- Affluent, working people between the ages of 25-54 make up a larger share of the Daytime audience than any other daypart;

- Children under the age of 18 are three times more likely to be reached during the Evening and Weekend dayparts;

- Internet utilities such as search engines, e-mail and chat show little variation in usage by daypart; online content sites, in contrast, exhibit distinct differences in usage by time of day;

- Use of News and Information sites is concentrated in the Early Morning and Daytime dayparts;

- Entertainment/Sports site usage increases dramatically during Evening and Weekend dayparts compared to Daytime;

- On average, eCommerce activity accounts for only 5.3% of time spent online; a considerably larger share occurs on Evenings and Weekends than during the Daytime.

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings usage data for September 2002.

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