Given the current, sluggish economic climate, retailers will have to look hard to find growth opportunities in the U.S.
According to Nielsen Claritas, they might start by taking a closer look at large, fast-growing metro areas, like Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix. 
These three markets ranked as the top three fastest growing U.S. markets in the last eight years — and could offer the retail industry some hard-to-come-by expansion opportunities, Nielsen reported in a new study released Monday.
“While some of these markets like Phoenix and Los Angeles have been hard hit by the recent wave …

U.S. households with fulltime working women spent over one-third more on sanitary protection, family planning, and cosmetics products than average American households during the 52 weeks ending June 28, 2008, according to Nielsen.
Professional women live in almost one-third (32.3%) of U.S. households.  In 2007 and 2008, these households represented 44.3% of sanitary product dollar sales, 43.6% of family planning product dollar sales, and 43.3% of cosmetic product dollar sales.
Other categories skewing to households with working women include ethnic health and beauty aids, baby needs, gum, and diet aids.

Rank
(by highest index)
Top …

Where did Web-savvy political junkies head to keep up with Election Day news back in 2004?
According to Nielsen Online, CNN’s website drew more than 3.3 million unique visitors surfing the Web from home on November 4, 2004.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s and Yahoo! News’ websites attracted unique audiences of more than 2.7 million and 2.6 million at home, respectively.

On the eve of the presidential election, both candidates made hefty boosts in their advertising in seven key swing states: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
On Sunday, Nov. 2, McCain ran just 708 TV ad units in those seven states — 48% fewer than the 1,463 ad units Obama ran that day. 
But on Monday, Nov. 3, Obama’s lead in these key battleground states shrank to 79% — or a margin of 1,510 ad units, after McCain’s campaign increased the number of TV ad units it ran in those …

According to Nielsen, trips to U.S. retail outlets decreased by 1.4% in the third quarter of 2008, compared with Q3 2007. 
Declines were especially steep during the last four weeks of the quarter, which saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the near-collapse of Merrill Lynch, and the government bailout of AIG.
Traditional mass retailers (excluding supercenters), department stores, and office supply stores saw the most dramatic declines in the number of shopping trips last quarter vs. a year ago.  Trips to mass retailers dropped by 9.1%, trips to department stores were down …

In recent months, U.S. households have accelerated their preparations for the nationwide switch to digital TV, Nielsen reported Tuesday.
The percentage of completely unready households declined from 8.4% in September 2008 to 7.7% last month — the largest single-month change in the past six months, according to Nielsen.

Josh Tanz
With the campaign season rapidly coming to an end, I’ve been thinking about how drastically my online and offline behavior has changed in the past few months. I am not alone in saying that I’ve been pretty consumed with election coverage since the heat of the primaries. Over the past year traffic to political sites and television viewership of partisan programming have jumped to historic levels. Most surprising, though, is that I’ve found my use of online video has skyrocketed from virtually none pre-election to daily …

Rank
Program
Network
Viewers (P2+)

1
FOX WRLD SERIES GM5 CONCL(S)
FOX
19,844,000

2
CSI
CBS
19,098,000

3
DANCING WITH THE STARS
ABC
18,876,000

4
DANCING W/STARS RESULTS
ABC
17,445,000

5
NCIS
CBS
17,258,000

6
NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL
NBC
16,741,000

7
MENTALIST, THE
CBS
16,073,000

8
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
ABC
15,933,000

9
GREY’S ANATOMY-THU 9PM
ABC
15,319,000

10
60 MINUTES
CBS
14,322,000

Source: The Nielsen Company (October 27, 2008 – November 2, 2008).

During the final weekend preceding the presidential election, Sen. Barack Obama ran 77% more TV ads than Sen. John McCain (5,947 vs. 3,358) in seven key swing states: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Despite trailing Obama in terms of the total number of TV ad units placed, McCain showed a much larger percentage increase in TV advertising from the previous weekend (Friday October 24 thru Sunday, October 26) to this past weekend (Friday, October 31 thru Sunday, November 2).  
McCain bumped his TV ad units up by 76% overall in the seven battleground states Nielsen tracked, while Obama increased his advertising …

EA Sports’ video game Madden NFL Football is the number one selling sports video game of all time, with more than 70 million copies sold since its release in 1988. Video gamers and sports fans alike eagerly anticipate the game’s arrival every year in what has become something of an annual holiday. Meanwhile, the game has successfully crossed over into television programming, has moved across screens to online and mobile, and has become embedded into U.S. sports culture.