Vivendi Universal and InfoSpace Make Greatest Gains in Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index.

Business/Technology Editors

STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2001

Austria and Belgium Join Global Internet Index;

Nielsen//NetRatings Now Measuring 23 Countries

Belgians Visit Most Unique Sites in April

Vivendi Universal and InfoSpace jumped towards the top of the Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index in April, riding on the strength of recent acquisitions. April also saw the first data for Austria and Belgium in the Global Internet Index, bringing to 23 the number of countries measured by the Index and showing that Belgians visited more unique Internet sites in April than surfers from any other country.

Vivendi Universal's ranking rose 123 slots in April, now that online gaming sites flipside.com and Uproar are part of the Vivendi property (see Table 2). Similarly, InfoSpace gained 29 slots in April, reflecting their recent merger with Go2Net as well as the addition of search engines such as dogpile and metacrawler to the InfoSpace portfolio.

"Vivendi Universal's rise of 123 slots in April reflects a jump in unique audience of nearly 12 million people in one month," said Richard Goosey, chief of measurement science and analytics, ACNielsen eRatings.com. "If their acquisition strategy is geared towards gaining significant audience numbers, it's working."

In April Belgians unseated South Koreans in terms of unique sites visited during the month (see Table 1). South Koreans have held the greatest Internet usage statistics since joining the Global Index in January. For their first month as part of the Global Index, Belgian Internet surfers visited an average of 30 unique sites, compared to the 26 unique sites South Koreans visited during the month, though the Koreans still visited nearly twice as many pages during each surfing session as any other country under measurement.

"By visiting more unique sites in April than surfers from anywhere else, Belgians were exhibiting typical early Internet behavior: browsing the Internet to learn the landscape," Goosey said. "Marketers there should strike while the iron's hot, because as we've learned from other markets, Belgian consumers will soon identify which sites meet their needs and will considerably narrow down their monthly surfing activity. For example, surfers in the US, the most mature Internet market in the world, only visited 10 unique sites in April."

Nielsen//NetRatings is the world's fastest growing Internet audience measurement service with the largest geographic footprint. The Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index provides the only worldwide measurement of Web audience and usage patterns across 23 countries comprising nearly 90% of the global Internet audience universe.

Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index
Table 1. Number of Unique Sites Visited Per Month, At-Home, April 2001

Rank         Country       Number of    Time Spent  Number     Average
(Number of                 Unique Sites Per Surfing of Page    Click
Unique Sites               Visited      Session     Views Per  Rate for
Per Month)                                          Surfing    Top
                                                    Session    Banners

1            Belgium        30            0:31:23    51           0.43
2            South Korea    26            0:41:59    90           0.47
3            Germany        26            0:29:28    48           0.53
4            Austria        26            0:28:25    47           0.44
5            Hong Kong      25            0:38:44    62           0.54
6            Netherlands    23            0:27:56    40           0.37
7            Singapore      22            0:32:55    56           0.17
8            Canada         20            0:27:48    36           0.18
9            UK             19            0:29:19    41           0.31
10           New Zealand    19            0:27:30    32           0.23
11           France         18            0:27:50    41           0.36
12           Denmark        18            0:24:07    42           0.57
13           Taiwan         17            0:36:15    76           0.36
14           Australia      17            0:35:43    41           0.25
15           Italy          17            0:31:25    44           0.45
16           Ireland        17            0:29:07    39           0.27
17           Finland        16            0:24:32    39           0.31
18           Norway         16            0:23:49    39           0.28
19           Brazil         15            0:37:37    47           0.38
             Global Average 15            0:31:27    44           0.36
20           Spain          15            0:34:57    42           0.59
21           Sweden         13            0:27:13    44           0.58
22           Japan(1)       11            0:32:52    55           0.39
23           US             10            0:30:35    35           0.32

      (1)Japan data from March 2001
     Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

Goosey also noted that Austria and Belgium had click rates for ad banners above the global average. Surfers there had click rates of 0.44 and 0.43 respectively, while the global average is 0.36. Surfers in Singapore had the lowest ad banner click rate in April, at only 0.17.

Additional highlights from the April Global Internet Index include:

- Napster continued to lose audience following its trouble in the courts, with
a unique audience loss of 14% in April, despite the addition of Belgium and
Austria to the list of countries measured. Nearly 60% of Napster's audience
came from the US in April, with Europe providing nearly 30%.

- MSN climbed over AOL Time Warner in April, jumping to the #2 spot held by AOL
in March. MSN also had twice as many page views and twice as many pages per
person as AOL Time Warner, and surfers spent nearly 13 minutes more on MSN than
on AOL Time Warner.

- Macromedia and T-Online also showed good unique audience gains in April,
though Macromedia had among the lowest numbers of pages per person of any of
the top 25 properties. Both properties also had low rankings in terms of time
per person on the property. In contrast, South Korea's Daum Comm Corp.
continued a recent trend of keeping surfers for long sessions, with an average
of more than two hours per surfer in April.

Table 2. Top 25 Global Web Properties, At-Home, April 2001

Rank By  Change Property    Unique Audience  Reach  Rank Pages  Time
Unique   vs.                                   %    by   Per    Per
Audience March                               Active Page Person Person
                                                    Views

 1         0     Yahoo!        115,782,708   53.03    1   125  1:03:09
 2         1     MSN            97,904,847   44.84    2    84  0:52:13
 3        -1     AOL Time       91,675,041   41.99    5    47  0:39:11
                 Warner
 4         0     Lycos Network  66,540,831   30.48    6    56  0:21:24
 5         0     Microsoft      62,942,341   28.83   13    11  0:07:05
 6         0     Excite         36,241,151   16.60    8    43  0:29:10
                 @Home
 7         0     About The      26,766,938   12.26   17    19  0:10:33
                 Human Internet
 8         0     Walt Disney    24,155,054   11.06   11    35  0:25:20
                 Internet Group
 9        29     InfoSpace      23,421,836   10.73   18    21  0:10:54
10         1     eBay           22,329,761   10.23    4   223  1:30:39
11        -2     CNET Networks  22,273,272   10.20   28    18  0:10:30
12         0     Amazon         21,673,432    9.93   26    19  0:12:04
13         0     FortuneCity    20,067,945    9.19   63     9  0:03:28
14        -4     NBC Internet   20,032,075    9.18   33    17  0:09:29
15         1     Google         19,996,926    9.16   12    42  0:15:00
16        -2     AltaVista      19,691,406    9.02   30    20  0:08:22
17        -2     Napster        17,117,422    7.84   85     8  0:17:09
18       123     Vivendi        14,973,329    6.86   23    28  0:18:40
                 Universal
19        -1     eUniverse      14,832,059    6.79   32    25  0:18:27
                 Network
20        -1     Real Networks  14,814,368    6.79  139     6  0:04:53
21        -1     Ask Jeeves     14,313,448    6.56   44    18  0:10:09
22         4     Macromedia     14,275,958    6.54  118     8  0:08:10
23        -2     Comet Systems  13,101,671    6.00   29    30  0:10:06
24         1     GoTo.com       13,050,712    5.98  133     7  0:04:00
25         5     T-Online       12,244,655    5.61   24    34  0:14:48

Source:  Nielsen//NetRatings

Overall time spent online per month declined more than 5% in April, to a global average of just over nine hours, versus nine and a half hours in March (see Table 3). Page views per month also declined globally nearly 3% to an average of 770.

Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index
Table 3. Average Usage, At-Home, April 2001


                                            Current       Last   %
                                             Month       Month Change


Number of Countries in Global Index            23          21
Number of Sessions per Month                   17          18  -1.96
Number of Unique Sites Visited                 15          15   0.70
Page Views per Month                          770         792  -2.74
Page Views per Surfing Session                 44          43   1.90
Time Spent per Month                      9:04:49     9:36:37  -5.52
Time Spent During Surfing Session         0:31:27     0:31:52  -1.31
Duration of a Page viewed                 0:00:45     0:00:46  -3.62
Average Click Rate for Top Banners           0.36        0.41 -11.81
Total Internet Audience Sample            162,520     161,297   0.76

Active Internet Universe              218,323,967 213,089,096   2.46
Current Internet Universe Estimate    390,696,237 380,167,522   2.77

Source:  Nielsen//NetRatings

About Nielsen//NetRatings

Through strategic partnerships between NetRatings, Nielsen Media Research and ACNielsen, the Nielsen//NetRatings audience measurement service collects real-time data from more than 220,000 individuals with access to the Internet around the world. The U.S. panel sample currently consists of 62,000 individuals with Internet access at home and 8,000 individuals with Internet access at work. International panels are under development with over 150,000 individuals with access at home currently being measured in 23 countries, representing nearly 90% of global Internet browser activity.

Nielsen//NetRatings uses unique technology capable of measuring both Internet use and advertising to provide the most timely, accurate and comprehensive Internet usage data and advertising information in the global marketplace. Nielsen//NetRatings tracks the entire spectrum of Internet user behavior, leveraging proprietary data-collection technology from NetRatings, Nielsen Media Research's 50 years of expertise in research and audience measurement, and ACNielsen's international leadership in offering market research information covering more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.

About ACNielsen eRatings.com

ACNielsen eRatings.com is a venture between ACNielsen and NetRatings Inc. ACNielsen, a company of VNU, N.V., is the world's leading market research firm, offering measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics, consumer attitudes and behavior, and new and traditional media in more than 100 countries. NetRatings is the leading provider of Internet audience measurement technology and analysis. Through the Nielsen//NetRatings service, ACNielsen eRatings.com is creating the first global service for tracking audiences, advertising and user activity on the Internet in more than 30 countries worldwide.

About NetRatings, Inc.

NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT) provides Internet audience measurement and analysis services that enable its customers to make informed decisions regarding their Internet strategies. NetRatings delivers accurate and timely information collected from a representative sample of Internet users and augments it with detailed, flexible reporting and in-depth analyses.