With this week’s announcement that Yahoo! will acquire the European comparison shopping service Kelkoo, Nielsen//NetRatings can reveal the impact the purchase will have on Yahoo!‘s European audience.

Based on Nielsen//NetRatings NetView data recorded in February 2004, 38.6 million Europeans visited Yahoo!, whilst 12.5 million visited Kelkoo.  By combining these two audiences, and unduplicating people who visited both sites, Yahoo!‘s pan-European audience at Parent level increases by almost five million people, to 43.2 million.

France shows the most dramatic increase in audience, with a growth of 24% from 5.9 million to a combined unduplicated audience of 7.4 million people.  In some of Europe’s largest and most mature markets where audience growth is generally lower - Sweden, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands - Yahoo!‘s audience will experience a boost of 11%. 
David Day, European Managing Director at Nielsen//NetRatings said “As this analysis shows, from an audience perspective, this is a very good move for Yahoo!  It will now have the opportunity to spread the Yahoo! word amongst the 4.6 million non-Yahoo! visiting European Kelkoo users.  It will also have the opportunity to spread the Kelkoo word amongst the 31 million Yahoo!-visiting Europeans who didn’t visit Kelkoo last month.”

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