The ten most heavily used Web brands in the UK have it pretty good. Insanely good, as a matter of fact. A new report from Nielsen Online indicates that these ten brands (which were looked at along with 7,625 others) account for 45 percent of all UK Internet time.
Yes, Facebook, MSN/Windows Live, Google, eBay, Yahoo, the AOL Media Network, the BBC, YouTube, Microsoft, and Apple are living something like kings, sucking up 45 percent of the time people spend online while representing just 0.13 percent of Nielsen Online‘s sample.
Alex Burmaster, Nielsen Online’s EMEA communications director, added in a statement, “Between just the two of them, the two most heavily used web brands – Facebook and MSN/Windows Live – account for almost 11 billion of the 48 billion minutes that Britons spend online. That’s over one in every five minutes . . .”
Now, it could be argued that not every brand on the top ten list should be proud of getting a spot; search engines are supposed to find answers for people quickly, after all, in a process that usually involves sending them to other sites. But Google’s just plain popular, and apparently Yahoo’s email offering contributed to its high position.
Finally, here’s a bit of good news for sites that didn’t make the cut: In regards to year-over-year growth of the ginormous brands, Burmaster said, “This bodes well for the online industry as it attempts to attract the big brand advertisers by providing a more meaningful platform to engage consumers, particularly through the vehicles of entertainment and communication.”
