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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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The Last Olympic Post – Part One

September 02, 2008

This is part one of my last Olympic blog for a couple of years, but I can't promise others won't make comment. In today's installment I've updated an original chart, reviewed top performing sites through the Asia Pacific markets and highlighted the events that captured the attention in each country.

This years Olympic Games gave us many surprises, aside from the opening ceremony fireworks and singing. The total dominance of the host nation China, the emergence of the British in preparation for London 2012 and the incredible performances of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

In the Asia Pacific region the online competition has been hot and has taken up an enormous amount of column centimetres in newspapers and volumes of blog commentaries. So let's put it to bed once and for all. Using the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence tool we've reviewed each market.

The first chart is an update from our first Olympic Blog reviewing which country engaged most with the Olympics online, using the Official Games website as the benchmark.

Interesting to note is the high involvement of the Asia Pacific countries versus the UK and the USA. Explanations for this include other sites being dominant and news sites absorbing a lot of the Olympics oriented usage, e.g. NBC Olympics and Yahoo! the US. The surprise packet was definitely Singapore, supporting a team of only 26 athletes, yet consuming Olympics content with fervour.

Breaking down the Asia Pacific region country by country and reviewing the leading sites shows a few interesting behaviours.

Australia

In Australia, Yahoo!7, being the companion site of the official broadcaster, was able to climb above the official site, between the two of them controlling over 60% of visits to a custom category including the top 15 Olympic oriented sites. Yahoo!7's share peaked on the day the Australian team returned home to be feted by the Prime Minister.

The three largest overall share peaks in Australian traffic to the official Olympic site and the events they coincided with were:

· August 17th: Women's Marathon, Women's 100m Freestyle (Cate Campbell, Libby Trickett), Men's 1500m Freestyle (Grant Hackett), Phelps 8th Gold Medal

· August 10th: 2nd day of swimming (1st day of finals), Stephanie Rice Gold in 400m Individual Medley, Michael Phelps 1st Gold Medal and Aussie Girls Bronze in 4x100m Freestyle.

· August 16th: Usain Bolt's 100m Gold, Michael Phelps and Andrew Lauterstein in the Men's 100m Butterfly.

New Zealand

The New Zealand market proved to be more competitive between the Chinese language sites – Sina, QQ and The Olympic Report garnering a large share of visits. This suggests that the Chinese community was highly engaged in the Beijing Games, the latest Census data (2006) indicates 147,570 New Zealanders are of Chinese heritage, up 40.5% from the 2001 Census.

Peak days of Kiwi interest included a combination of local and international highlights;

· August 17th: Valerie Vili's Shot Put Gold Medal, Phelps record breaking 8th gold medal, Alison Shank's 4th in the Women's Pursuit and Ninia's Rillstone's 16th in the Women's marathon.

· August 16th: Usain Bolt's 100m Gold, Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindells "Twins Gold" in the Women's Double Scull, Hayden Roulston's Silver medal in the Men's Individual Pursuit Michael Phelps equaling the great Mark Spitz's 7 Gold Medals and the Men's Double Scull 4th place.

· August 20th: The day after Nick Willis' Bronze in the Men's 1500m, Tom Ashley taking Gold on the water in the RS:X Windsurfing and Usain Bolt's amazing 200m Gold Medal in record breaking time.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong saw an incredible amount of competition coming from mainland China sites and local Hong Kong sites. Sina.com grew stronger as the Games progressed, overtaking the official site and Yahoo! Olympics a few days after the Opening Ceremony and was able to maintain the advantage through to the end of the Olympiad

Peak days are closely aligned with other markets, the three highest share days were;

· August 17th: Michael Phelps record breaking 8th Gold Medal and the Hong Kong Men's Table Tennis Bronze Semi Final.

· August 18: Gymnastics Finals, Final day of Table Tennis, Men's 200m Athletics heats.

· August 16th: Usain Bolt's Gold Medal and World Record in the Men's 100m and Michael Phelps equaling Mark Spitz's 7 Gold Medal haul.

Singapore

Results were high on the agenda for Singaporeans during the Games. If the results site and the Official site combined they captured a dominant share of visits during the Games. As in all Asia Pacific markets Yahoo! performed strongly, spending three days as the leading site.

Days of highest interest, included the local athlete Calvin Kang in the 100m heats and the Women's Table Tennis team, otherwise the amazing performances of Phelps and Bolt captured the most attention.

· August 17th: Singapore Women's Team Table Tennis Silver Medal, Michael Phelps record breaking 8th Gold Medal and the Hong Kong Men's Table Tennis Bronze Semi Final.

· August 15th: 1st day of athletics, Calvin Kang and Usain Bolt in the Men's 100m heats, Michael Phelps Gold Medal in the 200m Medley in world record time.

· August 16th: Usain Bolt's Gold Medal and World Record in the Men's 100m and Michael Phelps equaling Mark Spitz's 7 Gold Medal haul.