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Almost 700 Million on the Net, Says New comScore Service
comScore Networks has announced the launch of comScore World Metrix, the first true estimate of global online audience size and behaviour based on activity from the company's global online panel.
The comScore World Metrix panel claims active representation from countries that comprise 99% of the global Internet population. In launching the service, the company announced that 694 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide from all locations in March 2006, representing 14% of the world's total population within this age group. comScore says the figure marks the first worldwide universe estimate based on a consistent methodology across all countries.
Notably, the new service includes measurement of the major Asian countries, including China, Japan, India and Korea, which represent nearly 25% of the total worldwide online population (or 168.1m users) and which, in the aggregate, are 11% larger than the US (152m users).
According to Peter Daboll, CEO of comScore Media Metrix, 'Today, the online audience in the US represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus ten years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience. This is a sea change of enormous proportion, and comScore is pleased to be able to provide measurement to aid the world's largest marketers in understanding how the world uses the Internet.'
Top 15 Online Populations by Country, Among Visitors Age 15+* March 2006 Total Worldwide - All Locations Unique Visitors (000)
* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafe and, access from mobile phones or PDAs.
comScore also released details of the top 15 countries ranked by average hours spent online per visitor for March 2006, as a measure of engagement. Israel led the list, with the average user spending 57.5 hours online during the month - twice as much time as the average person in the US, which did not rank in the top 15 countries. Rounding out the top 5 were Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands and Taiwan - all countries with high broadband penetration.
'comScore World Metrix data show high levels of engagement in countries outside the US' concludes Daboll. 'These high engagement levels demonstrate the importance of global measurement and underscore the fact that the Web is certainly not just a US phenomenon.'
The company is online at www.comscore.com .
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