Instagram Sees Audience Surge 78%, While News and Beauty/Fashion/Style Sites See Big Growth in April
According to comScore, Instagram saw its audience of unique visitors increase month-over-month more than any other Web property in April, while general news sites and beauty/fashion/style sites saw their audiences grow significantly as well.
Instagram boasted an audience of 14.6 million unique visitors in April, a 78 percent increase from its 8.2 million visitors in March. MLB saw its audience of unique visitors grow 66 percent in April, while DirecTV Sites saw its audience grow 42 percent, and BuzzFeed saw its audience grow 41 percent.
The general news site category saw its audience of unique visitors increase 12 percent month-over-month. The category’s 183 million visitors was an all-time high. Yahoo-ABC News Network led the way with 89.1 million visitors, followed by HPMG News with 59.4 million visitors, CNN Network with 57.4 million visitors, MSNBC Netowkr with 55.7 million visitors, CBS News with 39.3 million visitors and USAToday Sites with 34.1 million visitors.
The beauty/fashion/style site category saw its audience grow 9 percent to hit 83.6 million visitors. Glam Style topped the category with 13.2 million visitors, followed by Stylelist Sites with 9.9 million visitors, Hearst Beauty & Fashion Network with 5.2 million visitors, PopSugar Fashion Beauty & Shopping with 4.7 million visitors and Total Beauty Media with 4.7 million visitors.
Meanwhile, the e-cards category saw its audience grow 7 percent, while retail computer software sites saw their audiences grow 5 percent.
In April, the total number of unique Internet visitors in the U.S. was 222 million, down 1 percent from the 224 million visitors in March, according to comScore.
Google Sites finished April as the top online property with 189 million visitors, followed by Microsoft Sites with 171 million visitors and Yahoo Sites with 171 million visitors. Facebook was fourth on the list with 159 million visitors, while AOL Inc. drew 111 million visitors during the month.
The rest of the top 10 U.S. properties in April lined up as follows: Amazon Sites (101 million visitors), Ask Network (87.3 million visitors), Wikimedia Foundation Sites (85.5 million visitors), Glam Media (81.0 million visitors) and Apple Inc. (79.1 million visitors).
Glam Media saw its ranking rise three spots, while Tumblr made its debut in the list of the top 50 properties with the No. 47 spot and 23.5 million visitors.
Google Ad Network topped comScore’s Ad Focus ranking in April with a reach of 92.2 percent of the total Internet audience, or 204 million visitors. Rubicon Project REW Platform was second with a reach of 88.0 percent, while AOL Advertising had a reach of 83.7 percent.
Google was fourth with a reach of 82.5 percent, followed by AT&T AdWorks with a reach of 81.1 percent, Yahoo Network Plus with a reach of 80.3 percent, ShareThis with a reach of 79.5 percent, ValueClick Networks with a reach of 78.6 percent, 24/7 Real Media Global Web Alliance with a reach of 77.9 percent and PulsePoint with a reach of 77.7 percent.
Separate numbers from Experian Hitwise revealed that the top search engine for the week ending May 26 was Google with 66.8 percent of visits to the site category, followed by Bing with 10.2 percent, Yahoo with 10.0 percent, Ask with 2.9 percent and AOL with 1.6 percent.
The top website visited after search engines for the same time period was Facebook with 6.4 percent of clicks, followed by YouTube with 3.72 percent, Gmail with 2.39 percent, Wikipedia with 1.4 percent and Yahoo Mail with 1.1 percent.
Sources:
http://www.experian.com/hitwise/online-trends-search-engine.html
