"The Survey Says…," Interactive Gaming News' weekly potpourri of Internet research findings has been renamed "The IGN Data Hub." It's the same meaty content attached to a leaner, meaner name.
Compiled by Vicky Nolan
Free-Play Sites Keep Growing and Growing
Online gambling is clearly among the highest earning Internet Industries, but it's safe to say that gambling sites' free-play cousins aren't doing too shabby either. NetValue backs this up with a study revealing that the number of visitors to free U.K. free-play sites has doubled during the last four months.
Leisure sites (which includes travel and tourism, gambling, games, entertainment, sports, automotive and relationship sites) are rapidly growing in popularity. The number of visitors to these websites has jumped from 52.6 percent of Internet users in February to 63.4 percent of Internet users In May, a whopping 1.5 million more visitors.
The top ten free-play sites in the U.K. are:
- Uproar.com
- Speedyclick.com
- Treeloot.com
- Iwin.com
- National-lottery.co.uk
- Freelotto.com
- Jamba.co.uk
- Uproar.co.uk
- Tombola.com
- Prizecentral.com
Oh yeah, they also found that 35 percent (roughly 3.6 million) of Internet users visit porn sites.
www.netvalue.com
How Many Emails Do You Send, Receive?
The average American employee sends or receives 195 emails per day, while U.K. employees trail behind with five fewer, according to research by Pitney Bowes. While email was supposed to make jobs easier, many U.K. experts are now denouncing it. U.K. employers are now sending their staff on special
training courses for email communication reported one British publication.
Internet Ad Spending Is Far Higher than Estimated
AdZone Interactive calculates that total ad expenditures on the Internet were significantly greater than previously estimated. Based on their measurement of 1000 leading websites, AdZone estimates ad spending for January was $819 million, far greater than other industry "guesstimates." The company estimates that $1.213 billion went to advertising spending in May.
www.adzoneinteractive.com
House Ads Represent Large Percentage of Online Advertising
Although the number of advertisers on the Net has grown (nearly 65 percent since January 2000) many companies are filling ad space with banner ads promoting their own products and services. AdRelevance estimates that house ads represent as much as 20 percent of all online advertising. Their findings, which looked at 500 of the highest trafficked ad-supported sites between January and April 2000, found that few companies are extensive users of house advertising. Sixty-three sites carry over 20 percent house ads, while 15 sites for genres such as kids and families, games, and movies and television, run greater than 50 percent house ads.
www.adrelevance.com
One Quarter of PCs Unprotected from Computer Viruses
Coming on the heels of the "ILOVEYOU" and Melissa viruses, an unbelievable 25 percent of home and office PCs users don't update their anti-virus software at least monthly. In a survey of nearly a half million PC users from Central Command (an anti-virus software provider), 24 percent of respondents said they don't update their virus protection at least monthly. Additionally, 65 percent of the users said their computers had been hit with a virus sometime during the last 12 months, while 57 percent suffered a loss of data from the virus.
"Considering the high number of users who experience viruses and the big outbreaks we've had, this statistic is startling," said Steve Sundermeier, Central Command's technical service manager.
www.avp.com