WEMF, which carries out the National Readership Research and runs the Audit Bureau of Circulation on behalf of the publishing industry in Switzerland, has backed the Nielsen//NetRatings service, and has entered into a partnership agreement to resell the service in Switzerland.

According to Rene Schmutz, director of WEMF, "We selected the Nielsen//NetRatings service because of its proven experience and technology, which will be user friendly for our members. Another significant factor in our decision was the fact that Nielsen//NetRatings is a global service with true consistency of information, enabling easy comparison of data for Switzerland with that from other countries."

Daniel Huber, sales and marketing director, ACNielsen eRatings.com Switzerland, added "We are proud to deliver high-quality, objective data on Internet audience activity in Switzerland. Media planners, marketers, e-commerce suppliers, financial institutions and Internet properties will now have access to the richest data available on Swiss Internet surfing activity, and will also be able to compare activity in Switzerland to activity in 25 additional countries worldwide."

In May, more than three million people in Switzerland had home Internet access. Active users were online for an average of five and a half hours, nearly an hour less than the time spent online in May by Austrian surfers, and three hours less than US surfers spent online during the month. On average, users in Switzerland accessed the Internet 14 times per month for 24 minutes each session, visiting more than 500 pages during the month and spending 40 seconds on each page. In comparison, German Internet users visited 740 pages in May, and US surfers an average of 667.

The data shows that the Swiss Internet community is composed of 59% men and 41% women, with men surfing the Internet for an average of nearly seven hours and women surfing the Internet for just under four hours.