Websites such as AOL Sports and MySpace are receiving more traffic from specific types of new-vehicle buyers than they were six months earlier, according to the just-released J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Online Media Study - Wave 2. Though in the case of all new-vehicle buyers, as a whole, the most-visited sites experienced visitation increases of 4 percentage points or less, many sites experienced double-digit percentage increases among buyers of specific vehicle segments.

For example, recent buyers of midsize premium sporty vehicles, such as the Lexus SC Series, showed a 9 percentage-point increase in visitation to the AOL Sports site in August-October 2006 compared with April-May 2006, as measured by the Wave 1 study, which measured internet usage and behavior among new-vehicle buyers.

Buyers of compact utility vehicles such as the Jeep Liberty increased their visits to MySpace by 13 percentage points over the same time period.

"This suggests that online automotive advertisers need to be more precise in selecting sites for advertising," said Steve Witten, executive director of automotive research at J.D. Power and Associates. "Buyers of specific vehicle model segments demonstrate visitation patterns very different from the mass of all new-vehicle buyers."

The online patterns that specific-segment buyers display is evident even within the channel sites of large portals such as Yahoo. Buyers of compact utility vehicles, such as the Jeep Wrangler, Nissan Xterra and Toyota FJ Cruiser, visited Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Games at a much higher rate compared with six months ago (12 and 7 percentage-point increases, respectively).

"These differences make it clear that looking at new-vehicle buyers by the type of vehicle they are interested in is crucial for determining the most efficient sites for advertisement placement," said Witten. "Automakers and their online advertisers can capitalize on the opportunity to target a niche group of consumers that would be interested in their vehicles by watching for visitation increases at particular websites."

While people are reading about travel on the internet at basically the same rate as six months ago - 27 percent frequently read about travel online compared with 28 percent in the Wave 1 study - many of the specific travel sites have had drops in visits.

Expedia.com dropped 6 percentage points, Priceline dropped 4 percentage points and Orbitz dropped 3 percentage points - likely due to seasonality, with more people investigating their summer vacation options in late spring. Yet, buyers of compact premium conventional and midsize CUVs, such as the Acura TL, BMW 3 Series, Chrysler Pacifica and Toyota Highlander, are visiting MSN Travel more often, with a 5 percentage-point increase than during the Wave 1 study.