The so-called 'birds nest' --
this year's home of the Olympics

NBC's and Yahoo's Olympics sites lead the US internet-audience race among the top 10 most-visited Beijing Olympics-related content websites — and NBC's online-video offering have also gained momentum, according to (pdf) Nielsen Online, writes MarketingCharts.

On Saturday, Aug. 9, the first official day of competition, NBC's Olympics site drew a unique audience of over 4 million. Yahoo's Olympics site attracted 3.3 million, followed by AOL's Olympic site with more than 1 million.

The Video Games

The audience to NBC's Olympics video offering - which will include more than 2,000 hours of live coverage during the games, along with replays and athlete interviews - drew a US unique audience of 436,000 users on the day of the opening ceremony and nearly doubled the next day:

• August 7: 36,000
• August 8: 436,000
• August 9: 858,000

"With the ubiquity of broadband and the breadth of available content - combined with the time difference between the U.S. and Beijing - this truly is the first online video Olympics," commented Jon Gibs, vice-president, media analytics, Nielsen Online.