Greater China Internet usage: web portals lead; social networking trails

The report found that portals commanded the largest share of online minutes, accounting for 24.4% of total time in Greater China, followed by the entertainment, search/navigation, social networking and retail site categories. These five categories combined accounted for half of all time spent online in Greater China during April. Separately, comScore also announced the appointment of Xinyu Huang to the position of senior vice president of Greater China.

"The digital environment is constantly growing and evolving and no place is greater proof of this than Greater China," said Huang. "To support these burgeoning digital economies, agencies, advertisers and publishers need reliable audience metrics in order to move ad dollars online, helping the industry to flourish. comScore aims to support this growth by continuing to bring its trusted digital measurement solutions to these markets."

Online users spend largest share of time on portal and entertainment sites

Internet users age 15 and older accessing the Internet from a home or work location in Greater China (which includes Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for this study) allocated the largest share of their time online to portal sites in April. During the month, Portals accounted for 24.4% of time spent online in Greater China. Entertainment sites followed accounting for 9%, with search/navigation securing 6.2% of total minutes. Social networking accounted for just 5.5% of total minutes, less than one-third of the category's percentage on a worldwide basis. The retail category ranked fifth with 5.0% of time spent in Greater China.

*Greater China refers to the aggregate of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
**Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Analysis of the most-visited sites across these categories showed Tencent, Inc. leading as the top Portal in Greater China reaching 64.4% of all Internet users in the market. Online video provider Youku, Inc. led as the largest Entertainment site reaching 19.2% of online users, while Baidu.com Inc. ranked as the largest Search/Navigation property reaching 59.4% of web users.

Oak Pacific Interactive Sites, which includes Renren.com, led as the most-visited Social Networking destination in Greater China reaching 17.8% of unique visitors, while Alibaba.com Corporation held the #1 spot among Retail destinations reaching 36.5% of visitors.

*Greater China refers to the aggregate of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
**Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Xinyu Huang appointed to lead comScore efforts in Greater China

comScore's appointment of Xinyu Huang as senior vice president of Greater China extends comScore's commitment to bring innovative solutions to digital audience measurement in these markets. Huang was one of the initial members of the comScore Software Engineering Group, joining comScore in February 2000. He has led the development of many key systems for comScore, including comScore's data collection technology. Prior to joining comScore, Huang was the co-founder and CTO of WebVersant, whose solutions provided voice interaction with web content. Huang earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from The American University.

comScore currently offers a variety of solutions for agencies, advertisers and publishers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, including its flagship audience measurement service, comScore Media Metrix, along with tools for media planning (comScore Media Planner) and measuring online video consumption (comScore Video Metrix), search activity (comScore qSearch) and social media activity (Social Analytix). For more information, go to http://www.comscore.com/chi/.