IVW Numbers For July, StudiVZ Over 3 Billion Page Impressions

IVW (German Audit Bureau of Circulations) figures for July report StudiVZ once again as number one by page impressions (over 3 billion) and T-Online as leader with 279.5 million visits.

In a recent article “How MySpace Conquered the Continent” Business Week wrote (emphasis mine):

The number of unique visitors to MySpace’s European sites has risen more than 72% in the past year, to 26 million per month, according to researcher comScore. Traffic has grown even faster: Europeans viewed 2.5 billion MySpace pages in May (the most recent month for which figures are available), compared with 1.1 billion a year earlier, says market tracker Nielsen//NetRatings.

MySpace is now the clear No. 1 social-networking site in every European country where it has created a local presence. In fact, Nielsen//NetRatings says its “active reach,” or the percentage of the population that visits MySpace, is anywhere from 10 to 15 times higher in Spain, France, and Germany than for runner-up Facebook.

While these numbers may seem impressive, it is regrettable that Business Week did not cross-reference this against local numbers. The also recent statement by Myspace wanting to be No. 1 in Germany and overtake the top spot from T-Online reflects a lack of knowledge as well. A social network with over 3 billion page impressions alone in Germany begs to differ - because Facebook is not the number to compare success to.

When it comes to measurement of success in the German market of online and offline distribution, the relevant organisation is IVW, usually called “German Audit Bureau of Circulations”. This independent organisation tracks all kind of advertisement relevant spaces (online through counting pixels), and numbers are published if the audited company agrees to.

And to be honest, I trust these numbers much more than extrapolations or other mechanisms of tracking / samples. While IVW does only track around 500 sites which submitted themselves to IVW, the big ones are usually in there and can easily be cross referenced with other numbers.

In regards of Myspace trying to be the leader in Europe, I would like to point your attention to a “newcomer” in the IVW charts. StudiVZ.de, a social network for students, entered IVW tracking in May and baffled everyone through sheer numbers, as they went straight to No. 1 in regard of page impressions, and place six by unique visits. This was repeated in July with 2.8 billion page impressions and nearly 88 million unique visits, and now in July they have crossed the mark with over 3 billion page impressions and 95 million visits.

Follow-up by page impressions is T-Online with 2.3 billion page impressions, but nearly 280 million unique visits. As T-Online is the major online provider and uses its pages as starting point, this is somehow to be expected.

While others may call sites like StudiVZ copy cats and point out that somebody like Facebook is set to have a localized version ready very soon, it is hard to bring a new player into the market when every second student already has a profile in StudiVZ.

Top Ten by Page Impressions:

IVW has added this month a new category for their reporting, called “User generated content”, to their current selection of editorial content (Redaktioneller Content), E-Commerce, communication (Kommunikation), directories / information services ( Verzeichnisse/Auskunftsdienste), Games (Spiele) and misc (Diverses).

Top Ten by Page Impression in User Generated Content:

In the following months we will give you updates on IVW numbers as a regular report. If you would like to access the monthly data, you can do so here: Access IVW reporting data [German only]