Survivor Pulls In Onlookers

What Rates Well On TV, Rates Well On The Net

Auckland – November 29, 2000 – The simultaneous success of the American show, Survivor, on television and on the Web proves that convergence between the media is a key to ratings success.

Broadcast between May and August on CBS and CBS.com, Survivor’s online ratings rocketed when the TV format began on May 31, according to the latest statistics from ACNielsen and Nielsen//NetRatings.

“Visitors to the show’s website jumped nearly 100 per cent during the TV show’s first month on air, ” says Managing Director Pacific ACNielsen eRatings.com Brian Milnes,

“Two months after the TV debut, SurvivorCBS.com’s ratings had kept on climbing to be up over 300 per cent.

“Then when Survivor finished on TV, we saw a marked decline in the .com ratings. Only a week after the final episode, online ratings almost halved,“ Mr Milnes says.

“The correlation between TV and online ratings is beyond question – our research shows that advertisers need to recognise and exploit the relationship.

“With convergence on the increase, and the ratings drive becoming more hard-fought, it is vital a heterogeneous approach to marketing is adopted.”

But the key to creating an online and broadcast ratings success remains elusive, Milnes says.

“People will come if the content is compelling. The category of “real life” is rapidly growing and we’ll be watching kiwiflatmates.com closely. We are keen to see whether that concept can build a brand fast enough to capture online-offline attention the same way.

“Some 23,000 New Zealand home Internet users visited the flatmates’ site in October, boosting its ratings through a TV documentary. The beauty of our business is we can quickly recognise which sites are drawing the crowds, and we can rapidly pass that information on to our clients.”

Offshore, the napster.com and bluemountain.com sites have also soared in recent weeks. The latter, an electronic greeting card service, generated 819,000 home based page views in October, compared with just 620,00 in the month of September.

ENDS

About Nielsen//NetRatings
Nielsen//NetRatings, the audience measurement service from Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc. collects real-time data from more than 70,000 panel members in the United States. The U.S. panel sample consists of 62,000 at-home users and 8,000 at-work users. These panels collectively represent the largest representative media research sample of Internet users in the industry. Worldwide, Nielsen//NetRatings services are provided via a partnership with ACNielsen eRatings.com, a venture between ACNielsen and NetRatings, Inc. and measure the Internet experiences of more than 200,000 Internet users.

Nielsen//NetRatings services use unique technology capable of measuring both Internet use and advertising to provide the most timely, accurate and comprehensive Internet usage data and advertising information in the global marketplace. Nielsen//NetRatings services leverage proprietary data-collection technology from NetRatings, Nielsen Media Research's 50 years of expertise in research and audience measurement, and ACNielsen’s international leadership in supplying market research information covering more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.

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