The Gender Gap Closes 04/09/00 NetValue, the first panel-based service that measures all Internet activity, including Web, email, chat, audio, video, games, ICQ, and FTP, has released its July 2000 Internet key findings results for the US, the UK, France, and Germany. It comes as no surprise that the US remains way ahead in terms of Internet penetration with over 51 million households connected (49.8% of the US population). Again, not surprisingly, the UK is leading the way in Europe with 30.8% of its population connected to the Internet, representing 7.3 million households. Germany comes next with 24.7% (8.5 million households), followed by France with 16.6 %, accounting for almost 4 million households online. The number of home Internet users is still increasing in Europe. The UK now stands at 10.20 million, Germany at 10.47 million and France at 5.81 million. Users across measured countries are connected an average of 10.2 days to the Internet per month (all activities: Web, email, audio, video…) somewhat less than the average US user, who is connected an average of 11.9 days. Women currently represent only 46% of the US online population but are more active on the Internet than their male counterparts. Over the past three months, women have consistently spent 32% more time surfing the Web and have viewed 30% more unique pages than men. And since they are being exposed to more advertising by being on the Web more, women also click on more banners. In July, women clicked on an average of 4.3 banners, compared to just 2.2 for men. In Europe also the most dramatic change is the split by gender: in July, a staggering 40.5% of Internet users in the UK were women with the proportion standing at 34.8% in Germany and 37.4% in France ( this compared with May statistics indicating a female population of 38% in the UK, 33% in Germany, 33.6% in France). The number of women currently logging on to the Internet at home now stands at over 4 million in the UK. In France, the number of female Internet users has grown to 2.17 million, and in Germany females account for 3.64 million users. This trend in the growth of women online is borne out by an increase in hours connected per user, number of sessions online, and total number of pages displayed: In the US, women have the highest affinity with theknot.com, a wedding planning site, and cooking.com, a recipe and cooking site. Within sectors, women have the highest affinity with the Astrology/Horoscope sector, while men have the highest affinity with the Personals sector. (Affinity is a ratio determined by the reach of the overall Internet population and the reach for the indicated target. An affinity of over 100 equates to a high affinity between the target and the indicated data). Women have the highest affinity with Arts and Culture sector in the UK, the Women sector in France and E-cards in Germany. The E-Cards sector (electronic cards) is one of the five most visited sectors in the three European countries measured, and surely contributed to women's use of the Internet this summer. Email and audio/video usage are two areas where men definitely still rule. In the US, only 45% of email users in July were women, and only 44% made use of audio/video. But that 44% represents a six point increase in audio/video usage among women since May, an indication that usage of audio/video is rapidly increasing among women. In Europe, email and audio/video usage is even more dominated by men, but the increase among women is very strong in every European country. Global brands dominated top rankings in July: AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! reach more than 50% of users across the reported major regions. Local brands, including Freeserve in the UK, T-Online, Freenet, Web and GMX in Germany, &Wanadoo, Groupe Libertysurf, Multimania and Grolier Interactive in France, are still struggling against the global brands. Newcomers to the rankings include NBC Internet, a first time US top property, and Real Network re-entered the UK top 10 property rankings for the first time since March, no doubt due to the runaway success of Big Brother. Ask Jeeves also continued its successful run, appearing in the top 10 rankings for the second consecutive month. Go Network entered the rankings as a German top property.