With Valentine’s Day this weekend, many curious and lovelorn singles are turning to online dating sites to find that special someone. And if advertising by those sites is any indication, this may be a real golden age for online hook-ups.
An analysis of ad expenditures by online dating sites shows significant year-to-year increase since 2003. In 2007, when the most recent full-year data is available, advertising for these sites topped out at almost $193 million. And with data complete through the first three quarters of 2008, last year’s online dating ad …

With a reported eight deaths and several hundred others sickened, the peanut butter salmonella outbreak is among the most serious food safety crisis in recent years.  It is not surprising that sales of peanut butter has dropped off in the last four weeks.
Nielsen tracks sales of a variety of peanut products at thousands of food, drug and mass merchandise stores (excluding Walmart) across the country. Here are the facts:

Nearly $32 million worth of prepackaged peanuts, including bags, cans, jars and …

Nielsen today unveiled the Economic Current, a monthly study that will track key consumer and retailing trends on a global, regional and country-wide basis. Using the vast amount of consumer data collected by Nielsen, the Economic Current will serve as a centralized source of information on key consumer topics such as:
• Market Index volume, in terms of unit and country currency change
• Retail channel shifting
• Shopping frequency and spending trends
• Overall consumer confidence
“Nielsen collects and analyzes data on tens of thousands of products around the world. As we were thinking of new …

On Monday February 9, 2009 President Barack Obama held his first prime time news conference. The conference was telecast live from 8 to 9PM on 8 networks achieving a combined 30.8 household rating with 49,455,133 viewers. The networks were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Univision, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
Just weeks after his inauguration in 1993 President Bill Clinton also held a prime time news conference. That event focused on the economy and was carried by 4 networks on February 15, 1993. The sum of the …

The drop-off in consumer spending and the uncertainty of the U.S. economy are sure to cause consumer product manufacturers to reconsider their plans to launch new products in 2009. But according to new research from Nielsen, the immediate reaction to abandon launches could be short-sighted and result in missed opportunities.
Nielsen recently mined insights from about 35 new item launches that are actively being monitored across a variety of packaged goods categories in the U.S. and found that product innovation remains important, but should be approached in a different way. For …

Despite the proliferation of mobile devices and online video, television continues to capture the most viewers, according to recent Nielsen research.  But how people are watching television has evolved and it is these advances that have made TV more relevant than ever.  They aren’t necessarily “watching TV” on TV – they are increasingly likely to watch TV programs on the Internet or on their cell phones, according to an article in the The New York Times.
The average U.S. household has 2.7 people and 2.9 TVs.  For the quarter ended September …

The NBA may not draw the highest ratings for nationally televised games, but it’s second only to the NFL in delivering their core fans to the TV sets, according to a new study from Nielsen PreView.
The study, which analyzed viewership data for some of America’s favorite sports, uncovered that while Major League Baseball and NBA pull in comparable audiences for nationally televised broadcast, when compared to the actual fan base in the United States, the NBA significantly outperformed most of its peers; NBA games were able to get 7.8% of …

Ken Cassar
I’ve been preparing for our upcoming Webinar on Retail Coping Strategies, where we will provide constructive advice to retailers on how they can best cope with the challenging retail environment that we’re in. This has led me to think about companies that are holding up well through the recession.
There are three companies that I’m particularly interested in: Walmart, Amazon, and Hyundai. Walmart’s US sales grew by 6.7 percent, profits by 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Amazon just announced that Q4 2008 sales were …

Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online,
For today’s webinar, “All Brand Advertisers Are Not Created Equal: Attracting and Retaining Brand Advertisers to the Web” Nielsen Online CEO, John Burbank and I will talk about the changing nature of online advertising, a new way to look at advertisers, and the attributes of the sites that are doing the best job of attracting long-term partners. As a bit of a preview, I wanted to briefly discuss the subject of long-term partners. When we take a look at Fortune 1000 advertisers and their advertising habits online, …

Advertisers during Super Bowl XLIII reached the largest audience of any Super Bowl game — the second most-viewed television event of all-time, according to Nielsen.  Ads for Bud Light Lime and GoDaddy.com were seen by 103.2 million viewers last Sunday.
According to Nielsen’s annual report on Super Bowl advertising and overall viewing, an average of 98.7 million U.S. viewers tuned in to the game.  Almost 152 million people watched the last six minutes of the game, giving it the largest reach by a TV event ever.
Other key findings include:

Total commercial airtime …