Americans settled into the Summer heat last month by increasingly visiting retail and gaming sites, according to the latest data from comScore’s Media Metrix. Together, retail and gaming site categories accounted for half of the top-10 fastest-gaining categories for the month. The biggest increase was reserved for gay and lesbian sites, though, with a 10% increase in audience for Pride Month, to 9.8 million.
The results mark a departure from last year, when June saw a considerable increase in travel site visitors.
This past month, the retail categories seeing the fastest month-over-month increase in unique visitors were fragrances and cosmetics sites (up 10% to 14.8 million), computer software (up 6% to 54 million) and movies (up 5% to 37.7 million). The gaming categories seeing the biggest boosts were gaming information (up 8% to 73.5 million) and online gaming (up 5% to 112.3 million).
Meanwhile, the top 10 web properties in June showed Google putting some distance between itself (192.6 million unique visitors) and Yahoo! Sites (188.7 million), after the latter had closed the audience gap to less than one million in May. Behind those frontrunners were Microsoft Sites (relatively unchanged at 175 million), Facebook (also flat at 144.6 million) and AOL (down from 118.7 million to 113.4 million).
Other Findings:
- ShareThis retained its top position among Ad Focus entities in June, but saw a significant drop in reach, down from 93.7% of Americans online in May to 87% in June. Yahoo! Sites (84.1%) was next, with Google (82.4%) overtaking Outbrain (80.7%) for the third spot.
- Among ad networks and buy-side networks, Google Ad Network was first again with 92.9% reach.
- Among DSPs, SSPs and ad exchanges, Rubicon Project REVV Platform took the top ranking, reaching 95% of Americans online.
