The results from the first wave of research are just in, and have highlighted some unpredicted trends in how people move around the Web, communicate and shop. It plans to increase the panel by 1000 people in each European region and 2500 in the US in future. According to Alki Manias, managing director of NetValue, this method is not as intrusive as questionnaires and gives better results than a survey. NetValue believes its unobtrusive measurement system is better than the click-through information recorded by other firms. UK companies already signed up include Freeserve, Microsoft, Yahoo and publisher Trinity Mirror.
Initial findings are interesting.
Results based on 12,000 UK home users show they are online for an average of 6.2 hours a month. Other UK findings show that 11 percent of users communicate with friends via Internet chat, and 40 percent use newsgroups and forums. This suggests that firms targeting particular groups of people could use these forms of communications more intelligently to develop customer relations and increase their market reach. It might also lead to new revenue streams, if firms can find ways to create markets in chat forums and newsgroups. A quarter of Web visits are related to adverts.