HONG KONG (Reuters) - Nearly seven million more people worldwide had access to the Internet from their homes in March compared with the previous month, with Asia leading the way in terms of usage, AC Nielsen eRatings.com said on Wednesday.

Some 211 million people were active Internet users in March, a rise of four percent from February, the Internet usage measurement agency added.

The average number of page views per month soared by nearly 9 percent from 711 to 774 pages while the time spent also increased from eight hours 51 minutes in February to nine hours 29 minutes in March, an increase of over 7 percent.

"Asia Pacific countries are showing the most dynamic Internet usage patterns in the world in terms of high levels of usage, click rates on ad banners, and duration of visits," said High Bloch, managing director of AC Nielsen eRatings.com Hong Kong.

South Koreans was the most active users of the Internet out of 21 markets monitored by the company with the average surfers logging 2,164 page views in March or nearly 92 pages in each session.

But South Korean surfers spent a mere 28 seconds viewing each page compared with the "stickiest" surfers in Australia and the United States, who spent an average of a minute glancing at every page.

Hong Kong ranked second in terms of page views with the average surfer clicking into 1,123 pages in March while Germany came third followed by Japan, Canada, Singapore and the United States.

Hong Kong had the highest click rate for Internet advertising banners at 0.69 percent. This means about seven surfers in a thousand in the territory would click onto ad banners.

This compared with a click rate of 0.62 percent in South Korean, which ranked second.

End.

I find this stat amazing,if true.I'm also intrigued by the surfing habits between differing cultures and countries.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), May 02, 2001