Viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices — the Three Screens — continues to increase and has hit record levels.  Nielsen’s fourth quarter A2/M2 Three Screen Report reports that the average American watches more than 151 hours of TV per month, an all-time high.  They are also watching several hours of video on other devices: those who watch it on the Internet consume another 3 hours of online video per month, and those who use mobile video watch nearly 4 hours per month on mobile phones and other devices.
“The …

Apple’s iPhones have doubled their penetration rate versus a year ago, according to Nielsen’s most recent Home Technology Report.  iPhone penetration hit 5.9 percent in Q3 2008, up from 3 percent in Q3 2007.
In addition to the increased popularity of the iPhone, Nielsen found that DVRs such as Tivo are showing up in more homes, with penetration up over 50% versus a year ago.  Households with teens were over 30 percent more likely than the average household to own or rent a DVR device.
Download the full report here.
Nielsen’s Q3 2008 …

Last week, Nielsen looked at the history of Daytona 500 viewership. And with the 2009 Daytona 500 in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that the some of those trends are still on track.
 
Greenville, SC and Greensboro, NC maintained their spots as the top DMAs for this year’s race, scoring 21.2 and 19.9 ratings, respectively. Dayton, OH surged to the #3 spot with an 18.0 rating.
 2009 DAYTONA 500: TOP-10 LOCAL DMA RATINGS

RANK
DMA
HH RATING
# OF HOUSEHOLDS (000s)

1
Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville
21.2
182

2
Greensboro
19.9
136

3
Dayton
18.0
87

4
Indianapolis
17.2
192

5
Knoxville
17.0
93

6
Charlotte
15.6
175

7
Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn
15.4
226

8
Nashville
15.3
155

9
Tampa-St. Pete, Sarasota
15.3
278

10
Jacksonville
15.1
102

source: The Nielsen Company 2009

At its peak (5:48pm ET), the race scored a …

2008 advertising expenditures for this year’s Best Film nominees:

RANK
FILM
EXPENDITURES (millions)

1
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
$31.0

2
Milk
$11.3

3
Frost/Nixon
$11.3

4
Slumdog Millionaire
$6.1

5
The Reader
$4.6

source: The Nielsen Company 2009NOTE: Figures do not include Internet or Outdoor ad expenditures

Consumers are still investing in home entertainment despite cutting back in other areas, according to Nielsen’s SportsQuestTM Survey.  The telephone survey, conducted among 1,865 respondents in November and December 2008, asked about a number of questions with respect to changes in their spending habits and how those changes may have affected how they viewed TV-related spending such as cable, direct satellite, video on demand/pay-per-view and DVD purchases and rentals.
The difficult economic conditions have forced most Americans to think about how they spend their money, so it is little surprise that …

According to Nielsen Online’s BuzzMetrics Service, Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet have garnered the most buzz so far compared with other nominees in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories with 47% and 46% of buzz volume, respectively.  Brad Pitt has more than double the amount of pre-show buzz compared with Mickey Rourke (22%), who follows Pitt in the buzz ranking, and nearly triples buzz volume compared to Sean Penn (17%).  Pre-show buzz seems to be a tighter race among the Best Actress nominees as Angelina Jolie slightly trails Winslet …

Ed Dandridge, Chief Communications Officer, Nielsen
It used to be so simple: a TV show aired on television at a given time, and usually repeated a few months later. If someone knew they would not be home to watch a program, they’d set their VCR and watch the program later.  Likewise, measuring viewership was also a fairly straightforward affair.
Programs still air at a set time on TV, but now they’re replayed millions of times in any number of places – on the Internet, on a DVR or a cell phone.  Americans’ …

Jon Gibs
On February 6th, John Burbank and I led a Webinar about online brand advertising, and we came to this conclusion – publishers need to change what they’re doing to attract the best long-term advertising partners. Who are these most-coveted of advertisers? Long-term advertising partners tend to buy consistently in large volumes and high concentrations on just a few sites. They advertise more frequently on media brands with cultural cache – brands that friends are likely to recommend to each other.
So how do you court these long-term partners? First …

Do Academy Award nominations impact the distribution and ticket sales of nominated movies? Nielsen EDI compared the number of theaters showing each movie and ticket sales before and after the nominations were announced on January 22 and found significant increases in most cases.
With the exception of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, each of the Best Film nominees saw triple-digit percentage increases in theater count after they were nominated. The increased distribution of these films also led to box office sales increases anywhere from 18% to 72% in the …

Yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2008 that beat analyst expectations, an all-too-rare occurrence in the retail world today.  Revenue increased 1.7 percent to $109.1 billion on U.S. store sales that grew 6 percent.  In its comprehensive year-end review of Wal-Mart, Nielsen looks at how the company innovates and differentiates itself from competitors as well as trends across categories.
Sales across all of the company’s key divisions – Walmart Stores, Sam’s Club and International – grew on a year-to-year basis by more than 6 percent.  Comparable …