• by August 10, 2000

Media Metrix today announced the top-ten newcomer websites to its syndicated audience ratings over the first six months of this year.

The research company’s findings show a positive correlation between online advertising impressions and the number of unique visitors to newcomer sites, indicating that greater advertising impressions contribute to increases in unique visitors.

In addition to online advertising, newcomers' marketing strategies include viral marketing, or customer referrals, cash and prize giveaways and other incentives.

Media Metrix found that Entertainment is the leading newcomer category, with four sites among the top-ten; other top categories include retail, business/finance and Internet services.

Seven of the top-ten newcomer sites conducted online advertising campaigns between December 1999 and June 2000, and five showed a positive correlation between intensified online ad campaigns and their debuts as newcomers, according to AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix. Also, the three sites that did not report any advertising activity incorporated some form of viral marketing.

To qualify as a top newcomer in this study, sites garnered a minimum of 500,000 unique visitors and were among the top-ten newcomers during their debut month in Media Metrix' syndicated audience ratings.

Two examples of online advertising successes in the study were Half.com and Ourhouse.com. Half.com, which enables consumers to buy and sell used books, movies, music and games, debuted as a Media Metrix newcomer in March 2000. The site's debut coincided with a leap in its online ad impressions during the same period. Half.com's traffic steadily increased to 3,517,000 unique visitors in June 2000, when it announced it will be acquired by Ebay.

Ace Hardware-affiliated Ourhouse.com, which markets home appliances and provides advice and referrals for a wide array of home-related services, debuted as a Media Metrix newcomer in January 2000. Its debut also coincided with a spike in its online advertising as well as offline promotions.

Media Metric also said that viral marketing and customer-referral models are effective in driving traffic to websites.

Humor sites Passthison.com and Debsfunpages.com both employ viral-marketing strategies to drive and maintain traffic. Users of these sites are prompted to email friends links to various greetings, cartoons and photographs. Email recipients then are linked back to the sites to view their message.

Personal-finance site Paypal.com, which enable visitors to send and receive money over the Internet, uses viral marketing and required user-registration policies to drive and maintain traffic. The service also provides a $10 cash incentive to any user who signs up a friend. Personal-finance site Onmoney.com, which enables separate online accounts to be managed from one site, also uses required user-registration policies.

Additionally, incentive programs and partnerships we