Searches on Both XM and Sirius Result in Holiday Retail Visits
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2005— Howard Stern's departure from broadcast radio last week has raised the questions of how many loyal Stern fans will follow him to Sirius Satellite Radio, and how this move will impact the satellite radio market overall.
According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, the market share of visits to Sirius Satellite Radio (www.siriusradio.com) and XM Radio (www.xmradio.com) increased 99 percent and 62 percent respectively for the week ending December 17, 2005 versus the same week last year (week ending December 18, 2005). In September, with Howard Stern's departure imminent, the market share of visits to SiriusRadio.com surpassed XMRadio.com, which claims more than twice the subscriber numbers as Sirius.
Interest in satellite radio has increased as the holidays approached; the share of searches containing the word "sirius" surged 78 percent when comparing last week (week ending December 17, 2005) to the week before Thanksgiving (week ending November 19, 2005), while the share of searches containing "xm" was up 13 percent in the same period.
While over 70 percent of searches for "xm radio" and "sirius radio" resulted in a visit to the respective company web pages for the four weeks ending December 17, 2005, searches for both products also resulted in visits to retail sites like Circuit City, Amazon.com, and Radio Shack. Retailers also figured prominently in sites visited directly after the Sirius site, with the Sirius Store (shop.sirius.com) capturing 39.4 percent of Sirius' downstream visits along with Best Buy (2.2%) and eBay (1.9%) for the week ending December 17, 2005. Sites visited immediately after XM Radio included the XM Radio Store (shop.xmradio.com) at 19.3% of downstream visits, Walmart.com (2.5%) and Best Buy (2.5%) during the same week.
"Search term and clickstream data on satellite radio systems demonstrates an increased interest in purchasing satellite radios this holiday season," said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research at Hitwise. "Stern has increased awareness and spurred interest in satellite radio, not only for Sirius but for rival XM Radio. His move has also benefited retailers of satellite radio systems, ensuring that the radios will appear under many Christmas trees this holiday season."
Stern will bring a younger, more urban audience to satellite radio
XMRadio.com and SiriusRadio.com currently attract an older demographic than HowardStern.com. For the four weeks ending December 10, 2005, 35 percent of visitors to XM Radio were over the age of 45 years, compared to 24.5 percent of visitors to Sirius Radio. Visitors to HowardStern.com, however, were younger, with more than 50 percent were under the age of 34 years, and only 19.6 percent were over 45.
Visitors to satellite radio sites tend to live in the rural US as represented by Hitwise Claritas PRIZM NE Town & Country segments. More than 50 percent of visitors to XMRadio.com and 45 percent of visitors to SiriusRadio.com reside in the small towns and rural villages that make up this segment. In contrast, only 32.6 percent of visitors to HowardStern.com were in these Town & Country segments. Stern's site tends to attract a higher proportion of the Urban segments, with 23.4 percent of its visitors in an Urban social group, compared to 13.8 percent of visitors to Sirius, and 10.3 percent of visitors to XM Radio.
Weekly Holiday Shopping Tracker:
Data period: week ending December 17, 2005
U.S. visits to retail websites accounted for 10.65 percent of all visits to the Internet.
Top growing retail categories last week were: Flowers and Gifts (up 13.5%), Grocery and Alcohol (up 11.7%), Video and Games (up 6.8%), Appliances and Electronics (up 5%), and Music (up 3.7%).
Retail (10.65 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (16.29 percent). Retail is again ahead of Email sites (9.1 percent).
The leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Web sites were "ipod," "lingerie," "toys," "digital cameras," "mp3 players," "flowers," "cell phones," "auto parts," "books," and "ipod nano."
Hitwise U.S. Data
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Week Ending 12/17 /05
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
% growth weekly (w/e 12/17/05 compared to w/e 12/10/05)
1.
eBay*
www.ebay.com
19.36%
-2.14%
2.
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
3.56%
1.43%
3.
Walmart.com
www.walmart.com
2.15%
5.31%
4.
Dell USA
www.dell.com
1.40%
6.27%
5.
Target
www.target.com
1.33%
-3.59%
6.
BestBuy.com
www.bestbuy.com
1.14%
10.92%
7.
Craig's List
www.craigslist.org
0.99%
-0.08%
8.
JC Penney
www.jcpenney.com
0.81%
-6.27%
9.
CircuitCity.com
www.circuitcity.com
0.79%
2.89%
10.
Overstock.com
www.overstock.com
0.71%
-2.66%
11.
Sears.com
www.sears.com
0.68%
-0.15%
12.
NetFlix.com
www.netflix.com
0.66%
8.89%
13.
Shopping.com**
www.shopping.com
0.62%
-6.39%
14.
BizRate.com**
www.bizrate.com
0.62%
-2.37%
15.
Shopzilla
www.shopzilla.com
0.61%
2.16%
*Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites ( eBay Motors, eBay Stores)
**Only includes visits to these stand-alone sites www.shopping.com and www.bizrate.com and not other Shopping.com or Shopzilla owned properties.
Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910.
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.
By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.
Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com. For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com.
