Melissa Davies
The FDA announced yesterday that it is launching a Transparency Task Force, charged with “making useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision-making more readily available to the public in a timely manner and in a user-friendly format.” The task force will seek public input on how the FDA can be more transparent, including identifying “new technologies for informing the public.” To this end, there will be a public meeting on June 24, 2009, to solicit recommendations.

Consumers are open to making energy-saving lifestyle changes. But, they are still far from becoming active managers of their household energy use, per new research from Nielsen Claritas. The annual Convergence Audit drew on data from more than 32,000 respondents replying both online and through the mail about their energy behavior.
While consumers are generally on board with energy conscious products, their green behavior has yet to extend to their habits in monitoring and paying for the energy in their homes.
Services offered by local utilities such as whole house energy audits, …

As the global economy appears to be bottoming out – at least in some parts of the world – questions still remain as to why so many people worldwide were blindsided by the severity of the crisis. Part of blame, it seems, may rest with the media.
According to a recent 52-nation online survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, the general consensus among consumers across much of the world is that the media did a poor job informing the public about the issues leading up to the current financial crisis.
In every …

Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines all recorded sound growth in ad spending in 2008 despite the global economic downturn.  Meanwhile, ad spending in Thailand dropped 3 percent during the year as political instability took a toll.
INDONESIA
Leading the group was Indonesia, where ad spending increased 19 percent in 2008 over the previous year, and all four quarter showed growth.

Media Outlet
2008 (US$000s)
2007 (US$000s)
% Change

TV
2,868,654
2,522,678
14%

Newspapers
1,499,080
1,165,809
29%

Magazines
182,731
149,715
22%

TOTAL
4,550,465
3,838,202
19%

Source: Nielsen AIS

The top 10 ad spending categories combined represent 77 percent of all main media spending in Indonesia.  The office equipment/computers/communications category led spending …

he financial crisis around the world has led to a sharp drop in consumer confidence and dramatic changes in consumer attitudes and behavior. But the Chinese are holding up remarkably well. How is their reaction to world events impacting confidence in their economy?

Jon Stewart, Research Director, Technology & Search, Nielsen Online
It’s safe to say that expectations of search capabilities and delivery have risen over the years, and Microsoft is betting that this will translate into widespread adoption of their new and improved search engine, Bing. In anticipation of its debut this week, Microsoft posted a teaser video and allowed select individuals to preview the tool, resulting in some substantial pre-launch buzz.
The Early Verdict on Bing
To understand how the buzz on Bing has unfolded over the last few days, we watched commentary—specifically reaction …

After the salmonella scare at the start of the year, sales of jarred peanut butter took a hit as consumers tried to determine which products were affected.  Last month, sales returned to their normal historical patterns, a trend that continued in the most recent four week period tracked by Nielsen.  On an equivalized unit volume basis, sales were up 3 percent from the same period in 2008 and down 1 percent from the previous four week period in 2009 – a trend Nielsen has seen in previous years.  Sales rose …

As previously reported, sales of over-the-counter smoking cessation products such as nicotine gum, lozenges and patches have increased as new federal and state taxes have boosted the price of a pack of cigarettes to $10 or more.  And the trend detected in the weeks immediately following the tax increases has not abated: in the most recent four week period ended May 16th, dollar sales of the aids were up 18.9 percent over the same period in 2008, while on an equivalized unit volume basis sales were up 30.1 percent (and up …

As theories circulate about the actual dollar value of sites like Facebook and Myspace-analysts recently placed Facebook’s worth at $10 billion-there is no question that people continue to gravitate in droves towards social networking and blog sites. In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site when ranked …

ankruptcies, declining readership, falling ad dollars and the suburbanization of America have all contributed to the slow death of the great American newspaper.