Sunday, February 01, 2009

CNN Digital Network Tops All News and Information Sites in 2008

CNN Press Release - CNN Digital No. 1 in Page Views and Total Minutes; CNNMoney.com Surpasses All Financial News Video Sites;

CNN Mobile Beats All Competitors for 23 Consecutive Months

The CNN Digital Network generated nearly 20 billion page views and 17 billion total minutes last year, making it the No. 1 news and information site in 2008 based on recent data from Nielsen Online. Year-end Nielsen figures also reflect that CNNMoney.com was the No. 1 financial news video site in 2008, and CNN Mobile maintained the top spot among all mobile Internet news providers.

"The strategic collaboration between CNN's networks and platforms – in particular TV and online – set CNN.com apart from the competition last year,” said KC Estenson, CNN.com senior vice president and general manager. “Throughout 2008, CNN.com offered Internet users a meaningful news experience and connected people to the world’s events more deeply than ever before.”

CNN Digital’s No. 1 rankings over all other news and information sites reflect a strong competitive lead across both total minutes and page views. In terms of total minutes, CNN Digital averaged 1.4 billion minutes per month in 2008, beating No. 2 MSNBC Digital by 25 percent and No. 3 Wikipedia by 35 percent, as well as No. 5 Yahoo! News by 63 percent and No. 9 Fox News Digital by more than 160 percent. CNN Digital also averaged 1.7 billion page views per month, topping its nearest competitor MSNBC Digital by 45 percent, No. 3 Wikipedia by 61 percent, No. 5 Yahoo! News by 127 percent and No. 8 Fox News Digital by 214 percent. (Source: Nielsen Online)

Throughout the year, CNN Digital’s exceptional coverage of the 2008 Election resulted in No. 1 rankings for more primaries, conventions and presidential commission debates than any other online news network. CNN was the No.1 online news property on Election Day 2008 as it attracted its largest audience ever with 12.8 million unique visitors, more than 700,000 higher than MSNBC Digital and 1.4 million higher than Yahoo! News. Additionally in 2008, the Political Ticker was the No. 1 political news blog according to Nielsen Online. (Source: Nielsen Online).

Holding the No.1 spot among video news sites for the last four months of 2008, CNN Digital also had a banner year for video usage. Additionally, with high consumer demand for news and information about the financial crisis, CNNMoney.com served more video streams in 2008 than any other financial news site with 186.6 million video streams, besting its closest competitor, MSN Money, by 237 percent. (Source: Nielsen Video Census).

In total, CNN.com served nearly 1.5 billion video streams in 2008, an 84 percent increase over last year. CNN.com Live, the Internet’s only multi-stream live video news service, nearly tripled its monthly video stream count in 2008 as it served an average of 6.9 million live streams per month, a 294 percent increase over last year. (Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst)

November was CNN.com Live’s highest traffic month in 2008 when it served 14.8 million live video streams globally, with Election Day marking the highest day of the year with 5.3 million live streams. Events that drove other top traffic days in 2008 for CNN.com Live included the day after the 2008 Election, the kickoff of the Republican National Convention and Hurricane Gustav’s landfall, October’s vice-presidential debate and Hurricane Ike’s landfall. (Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst)

CNN led the mobile news space in 2008 averaging more than 8 million unique visitors per month, more than doubling its nearest competitor Yahoo! News. The No. 1 mobile Internet news provider for 23 months running, CNN Mobile also beat No. 3 Fox News Digital by 238 percent, No. 4 ABC News by 281 percent, No. 5 Google News by 300 percent and MSNBC by 315 percent in 2008. (Source: Nielsen Mobile, Jan. – Nov. 2008). Additionally, in the fourth quarter of 2008, CNN Mobile ranked No. 1 among all mobile content sites, beating such providers as Weather Channel and ESPN (Source: Nielsen Mobile, Oct. – Nov. 2008; Dec. ’08 data not yet available).

As the global financial crisis intensified in 2008, CNNMoney.com’s usage minutes sky-rocketed, registering 1.8 billion total minutes for the year, representing growth of 378 percent compared to 2007. Additionally, CNNMoney.com registered 2.5 billion page views in 2008, a 49 percent year-over-year increase, and averaged 9.1 million unique visitors per month, a 19 percent increase over 2007. (Source: Nielsen Online)

“By combining breaking news, in-depth analysis, perspective and actionable advice, CNNMoney.com is a user experience unlike any other in our category,” said Jonathan Shar, senior vice president and general manager, CNNMoney.com. “This distinctive combination of high quality, trusted content makes it a go-to destination for more and more engaged users.”

In 2008, CNN.com also took a bold step with the launch of iReport.com, CNN’s user-generated news community. From its February launch through the end of 2008, the site registered more than 214,000 iReport.com contributors and received more than 188,000 photo and video submissions (Source: CNN/iReport Internal Database). According to Nielsen Online, iReport.com averaged 2.5 million unique visitors, 9.6 million page views and 10.1 million total minutes per month in 2008.

CNN.com is the world's No. 1 destination for online and wireless news, garnering the greatest audience share of total minutes among current events and global news sites. Launched in 1995, CNN.com draws from the resources of CNN Worldwide and its many partners to provide consumers with the most enriching, immediate interaction with news anywhere, seamlessly combining articles, videos, images, interactive features and user-generated content. CNN.com’s news video offering – both live and on-demand – is unparalleled on the Web. CNN.com’s recent awards include an Edward R. Murrow award, a National Headliner award, four EPpy awards and the Online News Association’s award for general excellence.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Dan said...

Wireless technology is indeed amazing. It's great that the news is now going wireless as well. I guess it could be a big deal for CNN that their network topped news and information but for the standard person it probably means little. Having said all of that, there is a great form of wifi called WiMax being offered by Clear . They currently offer it in Portland, Oregon but will expand to other areas soon. I just figured I would mention that since it does pertain to wireless technology and news usage.

9:49 AM  

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