Entertainment News Sites Are Increasingly Popular, comScore Says

comScore has released new data on the popularity of online entertainment news sites. The data shows that 55 million Americans visited at least one entertainment news site in May, a 7-percent growth year over year. Online video use for this type of sites was also on the rise, with a 53-percent increase in views since last year.

"With more than one out of every four U.S. Internet users visiting an entertainment news site each month, it's clear that following entertainment and celebrity culture has become a popular online pastime," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president, comScore. "What's also interesting is that Americans are feeding their hunger for celebrity gossip by ‘snacking’ on these news updates throughout the workday. In fact, nearly half of all time spent on entertainment news sites comes from work computers."

Americans spent a great amount of time on entertainment news sites, 893 million minutes, and 44 percent of that was during work hours. In total, one quarter of the entire US Internet audience of 193.8 million in May visited this type of sites.

Yahoo’s property, omg!, a celebrity gossip site, was the most visited entertainment news site with 20 million unique visitors during May, a 65-percent increase followed by AOL's TMZ with 9.9 million. USMagazine.com saw a huge 325 percent increase in viewers to 6.5 million, taking it to the fourth spot.

Online videos were quite popular for these sites as well, and TMZ came out on top with 10.3 million videos watched by 2 million people. omg! only managed to attract 1.7 million viewers and stream 3.8 million clips.

"May was one of the heaviest months on record for entertainment news consumption, but it will almost certainly be surpassed in June with the shocking news of Michael Jackson's death driving high volumes of traffic to these sites," added Flanagan. "While most entertainment news sites will see gains in June, TMZ is primed for an especially big month as the first outlet to report the news, which generated thousands of inbound links to the site."