HITWISE MOVIE UPDATE 

Sex and the City fever breaks out in London and New York

London, Tuesday 27 May - Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today reveals that the decision to hold the world premiere of the new Sex and the City movie in London has led to a surge in online searches in the UK. American interest in the film is yet to take off, however this may change following the US premiere, which takes place in New York City today. Following the London premiere of the movie on May 12, UK Internet searches for 'sex and the city' increased by 223%. For the week ending May 17 there were over seven times the proportion of searches for the term in the UK compared with the USA. 

The official Sex and the City movie homepage (www.sexandthecitymovie.com) also shot up the rankings in both the USA and the UK. For the week ending May 24 it was the fourth most visited website dedicated to an individual film in the UK, although in both markets it ranked behind Indiana Jones (www.indianajones.com) at number one.

Movie and shopping websites benefit from Sex and the City effect

A number of associated websites have also benefited from the Sex and the City effect. For the week ending May 24, 21% of people visiting www.sexandthecitymovie.com in the US went to Fandango (www.fandango.com) to find out about show times and book advance tickets. In the UK, Odeon Cinemas (www.odeon.co.uk) appeared in the top 10 sites visited after the Sex and the City Homepage.

Shopping features heavily in Sex and the City, and 36% of people leaving the website in the USA during the week ending May 17 chose to visit a retail website. Nearly half of these people went to www.bittensjp.com, the website of Bitten, Sarah Jessica Parker's apparel collection. The hype surrounding Sex and the City seems to have also benefited Manolo Blahnik, the high-end shoe designer preferred by the lead character Carrie Bradshaw, played by Ms Jessica Parker in the movie and TV series. US Internet traffic to www.manoloblahnik.com reached its highest ever peak this year during the week ending May 10, while UK visits to the site have been climbing dramatically over the last month and reached their highest ever peak last week.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up-to-date-analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

For media enquiries, please contact: jannie.cahill@hitwise.com