Monitoring traffic to three major web properties – ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and CBS Sports – during the recent NCAA Basketball Tournament shows a spike in activity over last year (Y-O-Y) and the boost in traffic compared to the previous month (M-O-M).

Unique Audience  And % Change

Site
Mar-08
Feb-09
Mar-09
M-O-M
Y-O-Y

CBS Sports
15,106,000
10,684,000
18,127,000
70%
20%

ESPN
19,844,000
17,181,000
22,938,000
34%
16%

Yahoo! Sports
19,432,000
24,953,000
25,515,000
2%
31%

Source: Nielsen Online

Additionally, video streaming on CBS Sports saw massive gains during the tournament, with nearly a 300% gain in unique users watching video. Those viewers racked up more than 380 million minutes of viewing time in March.

CBS …

Brand advertising budgets took a hit in 2008, with expenditures dropping 2.6 percent compared to 2007. While most media suffered, two bright spots were Hispanic cable TV, where ad spending grew 9.6 percent, and cable TV, where growth was 7.8 percent.  But what has happened to online advertising?
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing advertisers and web sites is the plethora of sites competing for scarce advertising dollars with little to offer in the way of differentiation.  Unfortunately, no single formula or strategy has emerged to guide advertisers looking to build brand …

Ford Motor Co. was the big winner at Nielsen IAG’s 3rd annual Automotive Ad Awards, presented Wednesday, April 8 at the opening breakfast for the 2009 New York International Auto Show.
The automaker took home the prize for Most Effective Auto Ad of the Year for its spot featuring several real-life women test-driving a Ford Focus for the first time. Other winners included Lexus for Most Effective Green Ad of the Year and Volkswagen for Most Effective Sales Event Campaign of the Year.

Watch highlights and insight from Nielsen IAG’s Lois Miller …

As a preview to Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference May 12-14 in Orlando, Nielsen’s Mark Leiter took a few minutes to chat with scheduled presenter Tom Davenport, author of Competing On Analytics. In this interview, Davenport discusses the economy, pricing, and advice for marketers. For more information visit consumer360.com.

Mark Leiter, Nielsen’s President of Professional Services Interviews Tom Davenport, Author of Competing on Analytics and Babson College Professor
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Few Americans have been untouched by the economic downturn gripping the country. But how we respond varies widely by demographics, according to a Nielsen study. Understanding how we differ in the ways we cut back can create opportunities for manufacturers and advertisers.
Nielsen created eight segments that divided households into groups based on their behavior and reaction to the decline.  Despite conventional thinking that these segments are based primarily on income, characteristics such as age, household size and location were important factors in determining groups based on how they cut back …

Like most people in countries around the world, Taiwanese are experiencing record low consumer confidence.  And just as consumers in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere have become more value-driven, so too have the Taiwanese, according to the latest Nielsen ShopperTrends report.
62 percent of Taiwan’s grocery shoppers claim to have become more price-sensitive, while among females over 35 and low income households, that number rises to 75 percent.  One store, Post Exchange, has capitalized on this trend with its low price strategy. As a result, 17 percent of all Taiwanese shoppers …

Jon Gibs
The internet is in an increasingly funny place. We’ve developed a media that allows an extraordinary amount of targeting and advertising measurement structures previously unheard of in other media. We track impressions, ad engagement, clicks, view-throughs, conversions, post-buy demographics, time per ad, branding effect and offline ROI. We can measure, and even plan by, just about any construct an advertiser would like.
The funny part is we can’t seem to get our head around GRPs. This is something I’ve written about in some length in the past …

As the 2009 Masters gets underway this week, The Nielsen Company looks at the tournament’s final round ratings during the reign of Tiger Woods. Starting in 1997, when Woods won his first of four green jackets, his presence at the top of the leaderboard has been ratings gold.

Ratings For The Masters Golf Tournement: 1997-2008

Year
Woods Result
Viewers P2+

1997
Won
13,685,000

1998
T-8
9,957,000

1999
T-18
9,993,000

2000
5th
10,061,000

2001
Won
13,638,000

2002
Won
9,694,000

2003
T-15
8,811,000

2004
T-22
7,913,000

2005
Won
10,778,000

2006
T-3
9,298,000

2007
2nd
10,152,000

2008
T-2
9,711,000

Source: The Nielsen Company / All telecasts on CBS

In tournaments won by Tiger, CBS averages 11.9 million viewers during final round coverage. In each tournament since 1997 NOT won by Tiger, viewership for …

Resident Evil 5 maintained its lead as the top title in unaided consumer awareness, as 10.6% of respondents cited the game in Nielsen’s latest weekly Video Game Tracking survey. Buzz around the game has remained strong, even three weeks after its March 13 release. Guitar Hero: Metallica moved up two spots to take second place at 7.7%, likely due to its March 29 release date and the rock band’s Rock And Roll Hall of Fame induction. The recently released Halo offshoot, Halo Wars, took third with 7.1% of respondents identifying …

By Joe Colacurcio
Recently, several online automotive enthusiast blogs have taken unique opportunities to directly engage with their audiences via live, combined chats, integrating commonly utilized platforms such as Twitter.com and the blogs themselves. This type of direct engagement shows the continually evolving potential for such enthusiast channels to form new “touch points” and influence online consumers in new ways.
On February 18, 2009, editors of the blogs Autoblog.com, Jalopnik.com, and KickingTires.com joined up for a live chat with online automotive enthusiasts to facilitate discussion and field questions regarding the viability plans …