Prepaid Wireless Services see Online Visitors Growth for March YOY

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a global leader in delivering digital marketing intelligence, today announced that Prepaid Wireless Services experienced a 37% growth to nearly 8 million visitors in online visitation for March 2008 versus March 2009. Four out of Six Prepaid Wireless Service Providers experienced growth during this time period.

Laggards:
VirginMobileUSA.com and TracFone.com were the only laggards, whom saw declines of 3% and 7% respectively. Although Virgin Mobile experienced a decrease, it appears this was because of an 18% decline in Paid Clicks.

Leaders:
MetroPCS.com, MyCricket.com and BoostMobile.com all showed significant growth during March year over year. My Cricket and Boost Mobile both experienced 100%-plus growth in Unique Visitors during this time period with the largest increases coming from Organic Clicks.

Mixed Results:
Ironically, Net10.com showed a 37% increase in Unique Visitors, but both this site's Organic and Paid Clicks declined by 40% and 64% respectively. Having not done further research, I would assume Net10.com must have received a boost in Unique Visitors from different Online Marketing Campaigns to subsidize these declines.

Is this increase real?
Some may think the recent economy may be the reason consumers are turning to Prepaid, but some optimists feel this could be continued internet growth. As a Search Geek, I understand that there is bound to be Unique Visitor growth, but in this scenario I believe consumers do not want to be trapped into a 1-2 year contracts.

This post was in reference to comScore's Press Release on June 10th, entitled "Prepaid Wireless Services Attract Increased Online Interest During Economic Downturn".