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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex Raytselsky who wrote (23238)	5/25/1999 11:56:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Respond to of 74651

A more sour look at recently good portal numbers for MSN... msnbc.com <<When is a hit not a hit? That's a question that some analysts are asking about two of the biggest portal sites. That's because Netscape's Netcenter and Microsoft's MSN.com are the default settings when people download the two companies' rival browsers. Analysts don't know whether the portals are drawing interested users, or simply harvesting clueless surfers who left their browser on the default home page. THE QUESTION MATTERS because Media Metrix hit counts — actually measured these days as “page views” or “unique users” for a Web site — are to the Internet what Nielsen ratings are to television: they not only measure the popularity of a site, but also determine how much a company can charge for advertising and other services. The home pages of both MSN and Netcenter are consistently in the Media Metrix list of top 10 sites in terms of number of unique viewers per month. In April, the most recent month surveyed, MSN ranked third with 22 million unique visitors, and Netcenter was sixth with 18.7 million. Netscape's portal was the second-most viewed Web site by people while at work, and Microsoft's was right behind it in third place, with 8.3 million and 8.1 million respective users. But each time a user who hasn't changed the browser's default home page starts surfing the Web, even if he or she immediately jumps to a different site, that registers as a visit for one of the two companies. The analogy is a television set that always goes to a certain network when turned on — it may drive up the ratings of certain shows, but it doesn't mean anyone's watching long enough to see the ads. “It certainly would tend to create a bias on those two sites,” said Andrew Bartels, senior research analyst at Giga Information. Both companies insist that's not the case. The users are for real, company spokespeople said. Visitors may first arrive on their sites because of the browser setting, but they tend to stay on the sites — and then it doesn't matter how they arrived there in the first place. “So what?” said Kate Gerwe, director of marketing for Netcenter, when asked whether the portal's users come to the site by default. “If they come first because it's the default browser and say, ‘Wow! This is cool! I want to stay here.' ” Netscape and Microsoft rarely agree on much, but Kim Poplawski, director of marketing for MSN sales, echoed Gerwe's sentiments. “How they get there doesn't matter,” said Poplawski. “Default is actually a lot less important than it used to be.” Both backed up their claims with similar statistics. Poplawski said that 85 percent of people who arrive at MSN because it's the browser default continue on to other MSN pages. Gerwe said that Netscape closely monitors the “click-through” rates of Netcenter users — that is, the number of people who continue on to other pages. Gerwe said she couldn't release the exact numbers, but that Netcenter's click-through rate was among the highest in the industry. Further, she said the traffic on the home page as a percentage of the total site traffic has been steadily decreasing, meaning more people are using more of the inside pages rather than just landing on the front from the default setting. The two also insist that advertisers don't care how the users got there. “It has not come up at all,” said Poplawski. “They just want exposure,” said Gerwe. “They're looking for volume and then looking for click-though rates.” PORTAL EVOLUTION Further, both companies are quick to point out that few people download the browsers anymore. Browsers that come pre-installed on computers are usually set to another home page by the manufacturer. And 40 percent of people using Internet Explorer as their browser use it through America Online, which sets its own aol.com as the home page, Poplawski said. (Netscape is now owned by AOL, which has said it purchased the company largely for its Netcenter portal.) AOL's portal was the second most viewed Web page in April, with 29.1 million unique users, behind Yahoo's 30.9 million, according to Media Metrix. Both Microsoft and Netscape have worked to turn their sites into true Web destinations. “I don't think there's a difference anymore,” Forrester Research senior analyst Jim Nail, who tracks Web advertising, said of MSN and Netcenter versus the other portals. “A couple years ago there was.” Nail said advertisers don't care how the viewer got on the site, only how long they stay. “I think you have to look at it with the information that Media Metrix releases on time spent on the page,” Nail said. “That tells you about the relationship the user has with the site.” Even competitors think the two browser makers no longer sport an advantage. “They get a lot of foot traffic going through there because that's where people start their journey,” said Jan Horsfall, vice president of marketing at Lycos. “But the reality is the user is really inquisitive. They're looking for answers and they're listening to ads. All it takes is for someone to show them they can use another start page.” And Horsfall said the other portal companies have been able to turn that into an advantage. “The churn's extremely low once you get them to switch,” he said.>>