CBSSports.com’s Jason Kint told us the online numbers were well ahead of last year and now CBS has released the internal stats to back that up: NCAA March Madness On Demand drew more than 2.7 million unique users during the first day of the men’s basketball tournament, up 56% over the 1.75 million that showed up for tip-off last year.

As you would expect, the amount of live streaming audio and video rose as well, up 65% to 2.8 million hours from 1.7 million.

Even the “Boss Button ”—this year a spreadsheet-like ad from Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people )—drew 1.5 million clicks. CBSSports.com didn’t break out the amount of audio and video.

In addition to third-party partners including Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )'s YouTube, Comcast, Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s MSN and Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people )'s AOL/Bebo, CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) Interactive has gone all out with marketing across 18 of its own sites. Stopping by CNETNews.com this morning for a news story brought up a large interstitial promo; CNET even did a how to watch March Madness video. CBS Sports and CBS Radio are promoting on the air.

—iPhone: The MMOD app is the number one paid app in the iPhone app store but CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) is not releasing any sales numbers.

The $4.99 app allows iPhone and iTouch users with WiFi access to watch any of the 63 games live or on demand; those connecting through AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) on 3G can only get live streaming audio.


Posted by CEOinIRVINE
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