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NBC's Olympics site
On-air promotions put it way ahead of the pack
By Marty Beard
Some underdogs may have taken some Winter Olympics events, but when it comes to the internet the clear winner was favored from the start.
NBCOlympics.com, the site NBC created for the Games, drew the bulk of Olympics-related internet traffic, thanks in no small part to the extensive on-air promotion the network gave the site during broadcasts.
NBCOlympics.com attracted a few more than two million unique visitors on Feb. 21, the day of highest traffic to Olympic sites, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
By way of comparison, CNNSI.com’s Olympics section drew 683,000 unique visitors that day, and SaltLake2002.com drew 666,000 unique visitors.
"The sheer volume of traffic going to NBC’s Olympics web site demonstrates the strength of cross-media promotions for special events," says David Card, Jupiter Media Metrix vice president and research fellow.
Together, NBCOlympics.com, Olympics.com and several others among the Olympics sites powered by MSNBC attracted nine million visitors. The average visitors spent about 10 minutes a week online getting Olympics-related news and information. A total of 350 million page views were generated.
According to MSNBC, the live webcast section feature, "Live Now," proved popular as well, racking up 113 million page views.
Much of the web traffic tied directly to specific events, such as the pair-skating controversy, which according to Nielsen//NetRatings inspired a 199 percent increase in traffic at NBCOlympics.com, to 1.9 million visitors, during the week ending Feb. 17.
"We found that during the controversy around the pair skaters’ not receiving the gold medal, site traffic was in fact demonstrably higher," says Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Matthew Berk.
"Whether or not that correlates statistically we don’t know. But we can say that’s a relatively powerful proposition to move traffic from television to the web," Berk says.
It also demonstrates that heavy media consumers will pretty much go where you tell them to go online and that sports events are a natural fit for the internet.
"The nature of the medium allows you to get more granular and interactive with news, in everything from looking at race times and other reported metrics, to diving into greater detail on general news stories," Berk says.
Additionally, Jupiter Media Metrix determined that Winter Olympic web sites were accessible 99.2 percent of the time.
"We’re getting better at handling the traffic," Berk says. "Three years ago, four years ago, even two years ago, supporting that much traffic was certainly not easy."
It’s important, Berk says, to recognize the benefits of having this ability to shift people between TV and the internet so that they can get the most out of each medium.
But given the current economic situation, that might not be the ultimate strategy.
"While the power of on-air promotion of web sites was demonstrated, it’s a bit ironic because that’s something of a 1998 or 1999 idea," Card says.
"On-air time is very valuable, so maybe media companies should be looking into using the online programming to push people back to looking at what’s on-air."
March 8, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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