Car Rental Sites Draw More Than Four Million Travelers in July, According to Nielsen//NetRatings
Hertz, Avis and Enterprise Rent-A-Car Brands Most Visited by Consumers, Thrifty Garners Largest Audience Growth
NEW YORK, Aug. 27 -- Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis, reports that more than 4.5 million* consumers logged on to car rental brand Web sites from home and work in July 2003. As the Labor Day weekend approaches many travelers are looking to rental cars as an alternative way to travel during the last weekend of summer.
"The car rental market is an oft-forgotten success story in the online travel industry," said Patrick Thomas, senior Internet analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "The top brands are utilizing the Internet to provide reservation tools as well as offering consumers Internet-only prices, especially for leisure rentals."
According to Nielsen//NetRatings July 2003 data, Hertz led car rental brand sites attracting more than 1.7 million surfers from work and home, representing an increase of two percent from a year ago (see Table 1). Consumers can rent cars directly from these car rental brands as well as from online travel agencies+. Avis garnered nearly 1.5 million unique visitors from home and work during the same month. The third most popular site among surfers was Enterprise Rent-A-Car; the rental car company's site attracted more than 1.2 million visitors in July, making it one of the fastest growing during the past year. Rounding out the top five, Budget and Thrifty Car Rental attracted 1.2 million and more than 800,000 surfers from home and work, respectively. Thrifty Car Rental experienced the highest year over year growth, attracting 53 percent more users in July 2003 than July 2002.
Table 1. Nielsen//NetRatings Top Car Rental Sites Ranked by Unique Audience July 2003 (U.S., Home and Work)*
Unique Audience (000)
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Brand Jul-03 Jul-02 % Growth
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1. Hertz 1,754 1,715 2%
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2. Avis 1,483 1,178 26%
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3. Enterprise Rent-A-Car 1,254 943 33%
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4. Budget 1,215 1,114 9%
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5. Thrifty Car Rental 836 548 53%
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6. Alamo 809 917 -12%
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7. Dollar Rent A Car 764 583 31%
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8. nationalcar.com 708 782 -9%
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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, July 2003
* This is a custom grouping of the top car rental sites within the ground
transportation sub category. The total unduplicated aggregation of the
above sites represents a unique audience of 4,537,000 individuals.
+ Not included in this analysis
According to Nielsen//NetRatings' @Plan Fall 2003 release, 40.8 million consumers or 28 percent of Internet users, ages 18 and older, rented a car for travel over the past three months (see Table 2). Providing a benchmark for this audience size, the Nielsen//NetRatings' @Plan data shows that 74.4 million Internet users stayed in a hotel room in the same period and 64 million surfers traveled via airline.
Table 2. Nielsen//NetRatings Travel Related Purchases by Internet Users, Past Three Months (U.S. 18+)
Type Unique Audience Percent of
(000) Internet Audience
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Hotel Reservation 74,420 51%
Airline Ticket 64,205 44%
Car Rental 40,773 28%
Source Nielsen//NetRatings @Plan Fall 2003
"Car rental brands are currently receiving a large volume of reservations from online agencies, but they need to better understand and service visitors to their own Web sites," added Thomas. "Agencies are pushing vacation package deals, which have become very popular with online purchasers. Approximately 5 million consumers, in the U.S., purchased a vacation package online in the last 6 months up 32 percent from 3.7 million in the fall of 2002. The growing popularity of vacation packages represents a relatively untapped revenue stream for the car rental brand sites."
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Nielsen//NetRatings reports July 2003 data for the Top Sites by Parent Company and Top Brands. In addition, Nielsen//NetRatings reveals the Top Advertisers by Company for July 2003.
Nielsen//NetRatings Top 10 Web Sites by Parent Company and Top 10 Web Sites
By Brand
Month of July 2003
Table 1. Top 10 Parent Companies, Table 2. Top 10 Brands,
Combined Home & Work Combined Home & Work
Unique Time Per Unique Time Per
Audience Person Audience Person
Parent (000) (hh:mm:ss) Brand (000) (hh:mm:ss)
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1. Microsoft 97,310 2:19:28 1. MSN 86,540 2:05:06
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2. AOL Time Warner 93,041 7:07:44 2. Yahoo! 84,774 2:37:52
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3. Yahoo! 84,812 2:37:50 3. Microsoft 81,748 0:33:33
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4. Google 46,543 0:27:38 4. AOL 70,218 8:44:06
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5. United States 5. Google 46,543 0:27:38
Government 45,199 0:21:57
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6. eBay 43,556 1:47:41 6. eBay 42,109 1:43:59
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7. Amazon 36,943 0:19:01 7. Amazon 35,888 0:16:10
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8. InterActiveCorp 32,239 0:24:35 8. Real 31,058 0:34:50
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9. Terra Lycos 32,009 0:13:55 9. Lycos
Networks 30,852 0:13:58
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10.RealNetworks 31,317 0:34:44 10.MapQuest 27,185 0:11:45
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Example: The data indicate that 31.3 million home and work Internet users visited at least one of the RealNetworks-owned sites or launched a RealNetworks-owned application during the month, and each person spent, on average, a total of 34 minutes and 44 seconds at one or more of their sites or applications.
A parent company is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single entity. A brand is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content. Reach is a measure of the unduplicated audience that visits a property. The data are expressed as the percentage of the total universe of Internet users who logged onto the Internet at least once during the reporting period.
Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance Top 10 Advertisers
Month of July 2003
Top advertisers, ranked by impressions, are based on data from AdRelevance, Nielsen//NetRatings' advertising research service. An impression is counted as the number of times an ad is rendered for viewing.
Top 10 Advertisers by Company
Advertiser* Impressions
(000)
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1. GUS Plc 5,951,944
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2. Expertcity, Inc. 5,483,276
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3. j2 Global Communications, Inc. 3,861,389
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4. NetFlix, Inc. 3,528,097
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5. Intuit, Inc. 3,352,022
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6. Citigroup Inc. 2,339,054
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7. SBC Communications, Inc. 2,138,609
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8. Dell Computer Corporation 1,950,097
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9. Classmates Online, Inc. 1,855,512
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10.USA Interactive 1,825,298
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*Impressions reported exclude house ads, which are ads that run on an advertiser's own Web property.
Example: An estimated 1.8 billion USA Interactive advertisements were rendered for viewing during the surfing period.
About Nielsen//NetRatings
Nielsen//NetRatings is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis and is the industry's premier source for online advertising intelligence with its NetView, AdRelevance, @Plan and WebRF services. Covering 70 percent of the world's Internet usage, the Nielsen//NetRatings services offer syndicated Internet and digital media research reports and custom-tailored data to help companies gain valuable insight into their business. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.
NetRatings, Inc. Max Heineman (212) 703-5953
