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mega March Madness More than 4.3 million watch the first four rounds Apr 8, 2008
Through the first four rounds of the tournament, the most recent numbers available from CBS Sports, the March Madness on Demand video player has recorded 4.33 million unique visitors, up 147 percent over 1.75 million for the same period last year. The video player has streamed 4.59 million hours’ worth of games, bettering last year’s 2.27 million. And time spent per person with the video player for the Elite Eight games on March 29 and 30 was an average 32 minutes. By comparison, according to Nielsen Online, the average visitor spent an average 23 minutes on top video viewing site YouTube during the same week. Those MMOD figures may yet jump when the final weekend tallies are in. This year for the first time, and in fact for the first time in the history of any major sporting event, the final was available for live download. You can’t yet see the World Series, Super Bowl or Bowl Championship Series title game online. The Final Four games were also available online Saturday night, in a tournament where TV viewership has declined roughly 7 percent compared with last year. So why the big jump online when offline viewership was falling? It doesn’t seem to be a case of cannibalization. More than 120 million people will tune into some portion of the tournament on television, compared to perhaps 6 million on the web once the final numbers are calculated. Most likely, the web acted as a complement for hardcore fans who want to watch basketball at work or find a game that’s not being carried regionally. All 63 tournament games were available online, as opposed to on TV, where first- and second-round games were regionalized. CBS made a number of changes to MMOD this year that led to much of the traffic increase, and the most important one was making the video player available via a network of more than 200 sites besides CBSSports.com. Those include ESPN.com, Yahoo Sports and SI.com, where sports fans congregate, as well as Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook and YouTube, where more casual basketball fans might happen onto the games. CBS included MMOD links via its affiliated television and radio sites and offered a March Madness bracket application on Facebook that attracted 3.7 million users. CBSSports.com also dropped a registration requirement, allowing users to click into the games immediately instead of filling out a personal information request. That drew in those wary of submitting information online and led to less wait time to see the actual games. Too, CBS added a so-called “Boss Button” that allows people watching the game at work to click on the button if their boss happened by. The NCAA screen immediately switches to a spreadsheet with a graph and statistical breakdown of food and drink eaten during sporting events, making it look like the user is hard at work on a project. The “Boss Button” has been used 2.4 million times this year. *** Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended March 30, according to Nielsen Online, Google claimed the top spot among parent companies, followed by Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner and News Corp. Online. The top five brands were Google, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, Microsoft and AOL Media Network for the second straight week. Experian Group Limited was the No. 1 advertiser for the fourgh straight week with 6.0 million impressions, just ahead of NexTag’s 5.8 million. With almost 27 million ads served, Yahoo was again the top advertising site, well ahead of No. 2 MySpace at 3.7 million.
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