UK women still lag behind US in terms of logging on

NEWS The latest research from Nielsen NetRatings of web usage in Europe shows Microsoft leading the pack with the busiest websites, but there are still less European women online than in the US. The new figures - which give details for both the whole of Europe and the UK alone - show that 60 per cent of surfers are men, as opposed to the US where half of all netizens are female. However, despite the dot-com downturn, web usage continues to rise sharply, particularly in the UK where it rose 8.3 per cent in just the last month. But mitigating this good news for dot-coms is the fact that click-through rates for banner ads - the most common form of advertising on the web - plummeted again, down 14 per cent on the previous month across Europe. Tom Ewing, internet analyst for Nielsen NetRatings said part of this drop was due to a change in the type of advertising, which didn't necessarily ask surfers to click. However, he added: "People are definitely getting bored with banner ads and the whole idea of these fake window box style ads." He predicted click-through rates wouldn't stabilise until the dot-com shakeout was well and truly over, and many firms gave up trying to use the 'desperate' tactic of the shock banner ad. Microsoft was a big winner, claiming all of Europe's top three most popular sites. Microsoft.com, MSN.com and Passport.com - which runs Hotmail - each get in excess of 12 million unique users.