From GB

The launch of Freeesat adds to the growing popularity of additional services from traditional broadcasters in the UK. iPlayer, the BBC's online video catch up service, has seen its UK Internet traffic more than treble since it was officially launched over Christmas, and the website is now the 35th most visited in the UK. Similarly, searches for ITV's recently re-launched ITV Catch Up service have nearly trebled over the last month.

Freesat appeals to an older demographic than Sky

There were 79% more searches for the term 'freesat' than the term 'sky' during the week ending May 10th. "This is to be expected for a new product that has received a lot of media attention - over a fifth of Internet traffic to Freesat's website came from news and media sites during its launch period," commented Robin Goad, Hitwise's Director of Research. "Last week Sky's homepage still received 250% more internet visits than, but the type of�visitor was�quite different. While Sky's website's core audience is people in cities aged between 25 and 44, Freesat is proving more popular with older, more rural viewers."

Two thirds of visitors to www.sky.com are aged 45 or under, whereas for Freesat the comparable figure is 43%. Freesat appeals to an older audience: 43% of visitors to its website last week were aged 55 and over, compared with just 20% for Sky. Freesat also appeals more to people living in rural areas such as the South West, but is less popular than Sky in larger cities, particularly in London and the North West.

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Electronics retailers and manufacturers receive Freesat boost�

The interest in Freesat also helped boost traffic to electronics retailers and manufacturers last week. 35% of people visiting the Freesat website chose to visit a retailer afterwards, while a further 10% went to electronics manufacturers' websites. Argos received the most traffic of any retailer from Freesat, accounting for 16% of all downstream visits from The site that received the second largest amount of traffic from www.freesat.co.uk was Humax the British electronics manufacturer that is producing one of the Freesat set top boxes. Freesat accounted for 44% of Humax's traffic last week, helping increase visit to the site by 467%.