• by May 14, 2007

The Real Cities Network broke into comScore Media Metrix's top 50 ad rankings for the month of April, reaching 16% of the U.S. online population at number 36. Real Cities, which unites 130 local news sites into a national network, may have benefited from such hot April news-related topics as the pet food recall, which comScore Media Metrix reported also led FDA.gov to experience the Web's largest traffic surge during the month--up 72% from March--and Nestle to rise 34%, largely due to its Purina brand.

In the advertising rankings, other big April movers in addition to Real Cities were PrecisionClick and Interclick--both of which moved up four spots to numbers 17 and 30, respectively. In the top ten, ValueClick, Tribal Fusion and Blue Lithium each gained one position, while Advertising.com was number one for the 36th straight month--upping its reach to 88% of all online users. The remainder of the top 10, in order, were: ValueClick, Yahoo, Tribal Fusion, Casale Media Network, AOL Media Network, Google, Blue Lithium, Vendare Netblue TrafficMarketplace and Specific Media.

Turning to the 50 most visited Web properties during April, the biggest mover was ARTISTdirect network--climbing nine positions to number 41, with 15 percent more unique visitors than in March. Shopzilla Sites moved up eight spots to the number 32 position, while the top two positions were once again Yahoo Sites and the Time Warner Network. Google Sites moved up to number 3, followed in the top 10 by Microsoft Sites, Fox Interactive Media, eBay, Wikipedia Sites, Amazon Sites, Ask Network and New York Times Digital.

Following FDA.gov in the top 10 gaining properties in number of unique users were MLB.com, sparked by the start of the baseball season; Apple Inc.; Unister GmbH; Hallmark, which helped fuel a jump in the flowers/gifts/greetings category of 11%; NFL Internet Group, due to NFL draft coverage; Lee Enterprises; Nestle; Pimp-My-Profile.com; and Experian Interactive.

The category showing the largest user gain in April was gay and lesbian community sites, up 24% in unique users and led by Planetout.com, followed by e-cards, led by Evite.com; computer hardware retail; flowers/gifts/greetings retail; downloads; women's community sites, led by iVillage.com; entertainment news; food retail; job search; and personals sites, led by True.com.