Olympic athletes broke 132 Olympics records and set 43 new world records during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.
Meanwhile, Olympics fans who logged on to the Internet to follow the events around the clock set a new online precedent during the Games,  Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.
Olympics Web Portals
In the U.S., NBC, an official broadcast partner for the event, drew an average of 18 million (week one) to 18.9 million unique visitors (week two) to its Olympics website during the Games.
Yahoo’s Olympics section drove more traffic than NBC’s site, but visitors to NBCOlympics.com …

Are drug advertisements losing their zing?
According to Nielsen IAG, this year’s pharmaceutical commercials have been far less memorable for consumers than drug ads aired in 2007, Brandweek reported Friday.
Nielsen IAG ranked the most-recalled prescription drug ads in 2007 and 2008, and found that consumer recall indexes for this year’s pharma ads were significantly lower than indexes for the most memorable prescription drug commercials in 2007.
“The overall average has come down. A high bar was set, but now it’s just not as high,” Fariba Zamaniyan, Senior Vice President, healthcare, Nielsen IAG, told …

On Wednesday, Wolters Kluwer Health and Nielsen announced the creation of the Healthcare Consumer Informatics Alliance, which will provide data on consumers’ healthcare purchases, attitudes, and behaviors to healthcare marketers.
The Healthcare Consumer Informatics Alliance combines Nielsen’s knowledge of the consumer health and media space with Wolters Kluwer Health’s expertise in prescribed pharmaceuticals. 
Nielsen’s data assets include television and online ratings, consumer packaged goods marketing information, and others, while Wolters Kluwer Health brings de-identified longitudinal patient and dispensed pharmacy data. 
A joint consulting team, with members from both companies, has also been created.
View …

Bloomberg News reported that England’s smoking ban has contributed to a 6% drop in U.K. cigarette sales since it was enacted July 1, 2007, according to data released Monday by Nielsen.
British smokers bought 2.1 billion fewer cigarettes in the ten months through April 2008, Nielsen found, while sales of alcoholic beverages in bars declined by 8% during the same time period.
The findings suggest the smoking restrictions, which prohibit indoor smoking in public places, may have had a stronger effect on bar owners than tobacco companies.  According to Nielsen’s survey, more …

Melissa Davies
In the category of letting the customer tell you what the customer needs, Dell this week launched its new IdeaStorm for Healthcare and Life Sciences, an online community where users can share their best ideas for how technology can help improve the field of healthcare. Visitors to the site can vote on others’ ideas, bringing the best ones to the top for possible action by Dell. The idea list is sortable by most recent ideas, most popular ideas, and “Ideas in Action” that are being implemented as a result …