The Auto Channel Audience Larger than Most "Big Name" Automotive Sites

MediaMetrix-Comscore

March 2004 - This is the service most ad agencies use to determine where to place their clients on-line ad budget

Web users looking for automotive information viewed more content on The Auto Channel than any other on-line editorial automotive publication

Title                    Page Views Per Month

The Auto Channel            7,000,000
Vehix.com                   6,000,000
Intellichoice               4,000,000
Hemmings                    4,000,000
Car and Driver              3,000,000
MotorTrend                  1,000,000
AutoWeek                    Audience Below Statistical Cutoff
Road and Track              Audience Below Statistical Cutoff
Automobile Magazine         Audience Below Statistical Cutoff
The Car Connection.com      Audience Below Statistical Cutoff

WEBSEARCH

WebSearch Traffic Rankings(tm) is another third-party independent Internet audience measurement service that ranks current audience viewership. Unlike other "rating services" that base their projections on a sample panel of 10,000, WebSearch measures the viewing preferences of millions of users. We thought it important that the latest information showing the relative audience levels of The Auto Channel vs. other automotive focused editorial content web sites be brought to light.

Websearch.com
Traffic Rankings for Selected Websites
Week of March 1, 2004

 
Motor Trend                     4,113
Car and Driver                  4,847
The Auto Channel                7,618
Autoweek                        9,583
Autosite                       11,029
Popular Science                12,525
Road and Track                 18,336
Car Talk                       18,549
Esquire                        19,241
The Car Connection             19,293
Popular Mechanics              19,493
Automobile Magazine            28,230
Woman Motorist                 38,944
Outdoor Life                   44,839

Commenting on these rankings, Marc Rauch Executive VP, and a Co-founder of The Auto Channel said; "Our sites's audience growth trend is unbelievable...we have always believed that The Auto Channel's multi-million dollar investment in automotive content over the past 9 years would pay-off...now potential advertisers can see graphicly that The Auto Channel has more audience than the web sites of most old-line print magazines and up start web only pretenders.

Advertisers can feel confident that automotive advertising on The Auto Channel will reach In-market buyers, DIY'ers, Industry members, and the "Car guys and gals" who are the real "car consultants" within their circle of friends or business associates...and won't be wasted on sites with outlived reputation instead of substance."

Bob Gordon, President and The Auto Channel's Co-publisher said; "the latest site design changes, our addition of new exclusive features like "Actual Used Car Prices" and the leading search engines new emphasis on "real content" as opposed to spam promoted HTML Mumbo-Jumbo, has elevated the TACH audience to record levels."

Paula Petty long-time promotion and marketing manager for The Auto Channel challenged ad agency media planners to keep an open mind, "it's amazing to me", Paula went on to say, "that in spite of bloated reputations and name recognition earned in the past, there are some media buyers and planners who stay blind to today's reality...it's now time to switch advertising expenditures to The Auto Channel."

Head to Head Audience Graphs : The Auto Channel Vs. Competitive Sites

About WebSearch Traffic Ranking

Traffic rank is determined by analyzing browser reports for millions of WebSearch Toolbar users. Obtained reports are sorted, tabulated, and analyzed to determine a given website’s traffic rank. This process renders the results reported in the Websearch Traffic Ranking screen.

How is Traffic Rank determined?

Website traffic rank is based on traffic data derived from the WebSearch Toolbar network of subscribers. It is calculated by the total amount of users (scope) and the amount of original page views.

What are original page views?

Original page views measure the instances in which a webpage is first encountered by a WebSearch Toolbar User. Proceeding page views of the same page in the same context, by the same user, during the same session; are counted only once towards the page views total.

What is scope?

Scope measures the number of Internet users visiting a particular site. The WebSearch Toolbar measures scope as number of users per million. As such, the numerical ranking reflects the percentage of users, per million, visiting a particular site.

Ex: example.com has a scope of 7% - meaning an average of 70,000 (per million) users visit this site. Disclaimers

Traffic data is based on the Internet browsing behavior of WebSearch Toolbar users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:

The WebSearch Toolbar works only with the Internet Explorer browser. Sites frequented mainly by users of other browsers will be undercounted. For example, the AOL/Netscape browser is not supported, which means that we collects little data from AOL users, and our traffic to aol.com is likely lower than it would be for a more representative sample.

The WebSearch Toolbar works only on Windows operating systems. Although a large majority of the Internet population currently uses Windows, traffic to any sites which are disproportionately visited by users of other operating systems will be undercounted.

In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in our traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.

The WebSearch Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:) for privacy/security reasons. Sites with more secure page views will be under-represented in our traffic stats.