Wedding dress auction sparks traffic surge on eBay

1.30pm

Internet traffic data released today by Nielsen//NetRatings show eBay's United States auction for a size 12 wedding gown attracted 1.5 million American office workers last Wednesday.

The gown was put up for sale by a disgruntled divorcee, drawing attention from the internet community and the media.

In New Zealand, the story was reported in several media, including the New Zealand Herald's Sideswipe column.

In comparison, weekly traffic for the US Department of Defence saw 1.4 million unique users for the week ending April 25.

Web surfers got a good chuckle over the man's story of why he was selling the dress and photos of him modeling it, spending an average of six minutes on the page.

At-home, traffic to the page jumped 133 per cent to 726,000 unique visitors on Wednesday.

The auction ended last week with the dress selling for US$3850.00.

"This just goes to show what a little creative storytelling and emailing will do for online promotion," said Leslie Marable, senior analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings USA.

"The auction attracted a large number of web users in a very short amount of time."

The most recent count shows the page registered more than 8.6 million hits, according to its page counter.