Fans Following The Olympics Online

Nielsen Online has unveiled new figures on how fans around the world have used the internet to follow the Olympic games in the first week of competition.

Fans from across 10 countries* measured by Nielsen Online visited the official website of the Beijing games, at a rate of nearly 930,000 per day, with traffic exceeding one million unique visitors on several days during the period.

Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online, said: “With the first ‘online Olympics’ in progress, the internet has removed barriers related to international time zones, as fans have 24/7 access to updated Olympics content and video.

“Local, regional and global websites are benefiting, and with English, French, Spanish and Chinese versions, Beijing2008.cn is a popular destination for internet users around the world. Interestingly, traffic from outside of China to the official site tracked closely with medal results at the end of week-one, with visitors from the US, Australia and France in the top three.”

In an analysis of visitors to the video sections of two Olympics broadcast partner websites, Nielsen Online reported that NBC in the US and Terra in Brazil are attracting impressive traffic to video content. US daily traffic to NBC’s video section averaged more than 1.5 million unique visitors from home and work per day during the period.

Within China, traffic to the official site, Beijing2008.cn, averaged 1.5 million unique browsers per day during the first week of the games.

* Nielsen Online ten-country Olympics reporting includes the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, Japan and Australia.

Nielsen Online: www.nielsen-online.com