Internet Broadcasting Sites Experience Record Traffic As Winter Storms Sweep Across the Midwest and Northeast
Internet Broadcasting, the nation’s largest publisher of local news online, today announced that it experienced record traffic on Tuesday, February 13, due to winter weather that swept across the Midwest and Northeast. According to real-time analytics from WebTrends On Demand, Internet Broadcasting’s national network of more than 70 TV station Web sites received more than 35 million pageviews, easily eclipsing the network’s previous record set on August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
Many Internet Broadcasting sites such as WBALTV.com in Baltimore, TheBostonChannel.com and WLWT.com in Cincinnati offered “Special Edition” online storm coverage showing advisories, watches, and severe weather warnings, plus listings of official school closures, delays and dismissals. Other sites such as Hartford’s WFSB.com displayed live video streams of their on-air storm coverage, providing up-to-the-minute news on the changing weather conditions.
According to data from WebTrends, Internet Broadcasting’s weather sections experienced a five-fold increase over typical daily levels, netting 12.5 of the day’s 35 million pageviews. In addition, twice as many video streams were viewed compared to daily averages. Many Internet Broadcasting sites experienced large traffic spikes for slideshows of viewer-submitted weather pictures, achieving their own daily traffic records.
“When breaking news or weather affects people’s daily lives, America turns to their trusted local news source,” said Julie Burrows, EVP of marketing, research and product development, Internet Broadcasting. “Our record traffic is a testament to the strength of our TV partner brands, as well as Internet Broadcasting’s 10-year history of delivering online breaking news, weather alerts, school closures and traffic information.”
Traffic numbers represent an aggregation across Internet Broadcasting’s entire national network of TV station Web sites.
About Internet Broadcasting
Internet Broadcasting is the largest national platform of TV station Web sites. The company publishes more than 70 sites for America’s premier broadcasters: NBC, Cox Television, Hearst-Argyle, The McGraw Hill Companies, Post-Newsweek and Meredith Broadcasting. Each month, one in every 12 online Americans visits an Internet Broadcasting site, making it one of the nation’s largest online news publishers. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.ibsys.com.
About WebTrends Inc.
WebTrends is the leading provider of web analytics software and on-demand solutions for web-smart customers, including General Mills, IKEA, Microsoft, Reuters and Ticketmaster. With WebTrends Marketing Lab, the company has expanded its comprehensive analytics platform to offer on-the-fly data exploration, dynamic advertising optimization and customer targeting solutions fueling relationship marketing. Thousands of enterprises have chosen WebTrends solutions and consulting services to accurately prove and improve their business and marketing results. For more information, visit www.webtrends.com.
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