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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Super Tuesday results drives traffic spikes for News & Media websites

February 11, 2008

Coverage of Tuesday’s election results drove the market share of visits to the News & Media category to the 2nd highest peak in the past 36 months on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008. The market share of visits for News & Media reached 4.65% across all categories, second only to the traffic spike on August 28, 2005, the day of Hurricane Katrina evacuation announcements. Super Tuesday itself followed as the 3rd highest day in traffic for the category over the past 3 years.

The top ranked days reversed within the Broadcast Media category (a sub-set of News & Media), where traffic was slightly higher on Tuesday than Wednesday. This can be attributed to the broadcast networks augmenting their live coverage with additional details on their websites and actively promoting the URLs to listeners & viewers during the broadcasts. The cross-media promotions helped Super Tuesday become the 3rd highest ranking day in the past 36 months for the Broadcast Media category and the market share of visits increased 38% from the previous day. Traffic also remained strong on Wednesday and resulted in the 5th highest day for the category.

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Print websites attracted a slightly larger audience on both Tuesday and Wednesday than the Broadcast Media category, but the traffic remained consistent from previous days rather than receiving any significant lift from election results.

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