Commerce Time Spent Online Grows.

While Communications and Content continue to consume the majority of people’s time online, Commerce was the only category to register an increase in share of time spent online in August over July 2004, according to the latest results from the Internet Activity Index (IAI) published by the Online Publishers Association (OPA). The Index, developed in connection with Nielsen//NetRatings, divides Internet usage into four distinct activities — Content, Communications, Commerce and Search, tracking share of time spent on each activity on a month-to-month basis.

According to the IAI for August 2004, Commerce was the only category that showed an increase in share of time spent online over July 2004, from 15.2% to 16.1% (an increase of 5.9%). Content accounted for 38.3% of time spent online in August, second only to Communications, which commanded a 41.4% share. Share of time spent on Search in August decreased 2.4% from the previous month, to 4.1%.

“The increase in share for Commerce may be attributable to the ‘back to school’ shopping season, as well as some traditional seasonality typically seen in late summer and fall for categories such as apparel,” said Michael Zimbalist, president of the Online Publishers Association.

The Internet Activity Index is based on the proprietary clickstream database that underlies Nielsen//NetRatings’ NetView service. Popular online offerings were divided into Communications, Commerce, Content, and Search segments based on an objective approach developed by both the OPA and Nielsen//NetRatings. Nielsen//NetRatings calculates usage metrics for each segment using the same algorithms that are used for all NetView-based custom analytics offerings.