Thanksgiving Rules In The Northeast, But Southerners Claim Largest “Piece” Of Frozen Pie Sales

Consumers in the northeastern U.S. take their Thanksgiving feasts seriously.

Supermarket shoppers in markets like Hartford and New Haven, Conn., Pittsburgh, and Boston spend significantly more, percentage-wise, on ready-made Thanksgiving-related food products than average American consumers, Nielsen reported Thursday.

Hartford/New Haven residents were the top consumers of stuffing products, spending 44% more than average American consumers during the 52 weeks ending September 6, 2008.

During the same period, shoppers in Pittsburgh dominated sales of canned gravy, spending 119% more than average Americans, while Boston consumers spent 194% more than average Americans on New England’s signature fruit condiment, cranberry sauce, according to Nielsen.

But when it comes to Thanksgiving dessert, northeasterners can’t compete with their neighbors to the south, who purchased the lion’s share of frozen pies.

Little Rock, A.R., Birmingham, A.L., and Memphis, Tenn. topped Nielsen’s ranking of the top markets for frozen pie sales.  Shoppers in these three markets spent 75% to 102% more on frozen pies than average Americans.

Continue Reading This Post »

Primetime Broadcast Ratings, November 25, 2008

ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” was the number one-ranked primetime telecast on broadcast TV for Tuesday, November 25, 2008 with approximately 20.6 million average viewers.

CBS’s “NCIS” and “The Mentalist” rounded out the top three with approximately 18.1 and 15.9 million average viewers respectively.

Overall, ABC won the night with an average audience of almost 17.5 million viewers, while CBS took second place with just over 14.8 million average viewers. FOX and NBC claimed third and fourth places with roughly 10.5 million and 7.4 million average viewers, respectively. Univision followed in fifth place with an average audience of roughly 4.5 million average viewers.

Women’s Happiness More Recession Proof Than Men’s

As the world grapples with a global recession and financial markets remain volatile, many people are reminding themselves that money can’t buy happiness. Men however, beg to differ.

Results of a global happiness survey from The Nielsen Company reveal that men are happier with money, while women are happier with friendships and relationships with their children, co-workers and bosses.

“Because they are happier with non-economic factors, women’s happiness is more recession-proof, which might explain why women around the world are happier in general than men are,” said Bruce Paul, VP Consumer Research, US, The Nielsen Company.

The 51-country Nielsen Happiness Study, which polled 28,153 respondents online in May 2008, found that globally, women are happier than men in 48 of the 51 countries surveyed, and only in Brazil, South Africa and Vietnam were men found to be happier than women. Japanese women reported the greatest difference and are 15 percent happier than Japanese men. Women are also more optimistic about the future, scoring higher than men on predictions of their happiness in the next six months.

Globally, women were also happier with their sex lives although men were generally happier with their spouses. Japanese and New Zealand women reported the greatest difference in satisfaction with their sex lives.

View the full press release.

Read Retuers’ coverage of Nielsen’s findings.

Auto Sales… And Searches On The Decline

By Julie Enzweiler, Nielsen Online

Total North American auto sales are down 32% from October 2007 to October 2008 with November’s sales forecast not showing much improvement.

As the stock market continues its downward spiral and economic conditions deteriorate, consumers are talking online about holding tight to their wallets and are less likely to make a big purchase such as a vehicle.

The number of consumers that were seeking vehicle information on sites like AOL Autos, MSN Autos and Yahoo Autos began to decline around the June - July timeframe, which is exactly the same time that vehicle sales and the stock market began to fall. The unique audience levels for AOL Autos and MSN Autos have a strong correlation to vehicle sales especially in the last 3-months (1.0; 0.90 respectively); however, Yahoo Autos seems to be quite unique in the sense that over the last 12-months and even more recently there is no correlation between visits and sales (0.01, last 3-months).

Continue reading at Nielsen Online’s Blog, Connecting The Dots.

Most-Recalled Reality In-Program Placements: Oct./Nov. 2008

According to data from Nielsen IAG, a McDonald’s tie-in featured during CBS’s “The Amazing Race” was the most recalled product placements during the four weeks between October 20 and November 16, 2008. The reality show featured four of the top 10 placements during that time period.

Recall refers to the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, an ad’s sponsor.

10 Million+ In U.S. Watch Mobile Video

According to data compiled by Nielsen for the third quarter of 2008, more than 100 million US consumers - 42% of mobile subscribers - have video-capable cell phones. An estimated 10.3 million of those mobile consumers are watching TV/video on their cell phones. These findings indicate that mobile video viewing has increased 14% as compared with Q2 2008.

On average, viewers are spending an average 17 sessions per month viewing video, spending roughly 15 minutes per session. Apple’s iPhone emerged as the top device among mobile video viewers, with 9% of mobile video viewers citing the iPhone as their primary cell phone.

Who’s Watching?

- 65% of mobile video viewers are under the age of 35 - compared to 35% for total mobile subscribers
- 32% of mobile video viewers are between 25-34 years old
- 18% of mobile video viewers are teens - an avid and engaged mobile video segment
- On average, teens watch 22 mobile video sessions per month and spend 15 minutes per session viewing mobile video
- Over half of teens (54%) report watching video on their cell phones in bed - that’s 1.5x more likely than average viewers
- 64% of teens report watching programs to completion - the highest portion of any age group
- Teens are watching an average of 11.7 channels a month on their cell phones
- Teens are also more interested in seeing more user-generated content in the future than average viewers

For more on who’s watching where, read Nielsen’s updated Three Screen Report.

Learn more about mobile video – view Manish Bhatia, of Nielsen, addressing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s December 2008 forum.

How Obama’s Local Buys Added Up

Nielsen’s final look at ad buys by the 2008 Presidential candidates proved one famous mantra: politics really are local.

President-elect Barack Obama placed one-and-a-half times as many spot TV ads than John McCain during the general election season (6/08 to 11/08), and almost twice as many ads dating back to the beginning of January when the primaries were just heating up.

The local numbers show a much bigger discrepancy than those for national cable and network buys. Sen. McCain kept pace w/ President-elect Obama in those categories, with Obama edging out his rival by just 136 ad buys in the cable and network combined, dating back to January.

Other notable campaign facts from Nielsen’s research

• Obama’s ads were on the airwaves over twice as much as McCain’s in the final month before the election (210,245 vs. 97,023 ad buys).
• McCain took early advantage of Obama’s long primary battle with Hillary Clinton, which ended on June 3rd. McCain bought over three and a half times more spot TV ads than Obama in June (26,594 to 7,251), the only month that McCain beat his opponent in that category.
• McCain made a major push with national buys in September, out placing Obama 10 to 1 in cable and network ad buys.
• The two candidates alone combined for almost 850,000 total ad buys dating back to January.

Continue Reading This Post »

Primetime Broadcast Ratings, November 24, 2008

ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” was the number one-ranked primetime telecast on broadcast TV for Monday, November 24, 2008 with approximately 21.1 million average viewers.

CBS’s “Two And A Half Men” and “CSI: Miami” rounded out the top three with approximately 15.0 and 14.3 million average viewers respectively.

Overall, ABC won the night with an average audience of almost 15.2 million viewers,
while CBS took second place with almost 12.3 million average viewers. NBC and FOX
claimed third and fourth places with roughly 6.0 million and 4.9 million average viewers,
respectively. UNI and the CW followed in fifth and sixth places with average
audiences of roughly 4.5 million and 1.8 million average viewers, respectively.

Nearly 7.8 Billion Web Searches In U.S. For October

According to Nielsen Online, there were an estimated 7.75 billion web queries conducted for the month of October, 2008. Google search accounted for more than 60% of all searches with an estimated 4.8 billion queries. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

View September 2008 search results.

Cable Ratings, November 17 - November 23, 2008