A total of 99.2 million U.S. viewers have watched at least six minutes of World Cup action through Tuesday. The figure already surpasses the 91.4 million viewers who watched at least some of the games throughout the entire 2006 World Cup.

The size of the U.K. Internet audience grew from 36.9 million people in May 2009 to 38.8 million people in May 2010. Of these 1.9 million new Internet users, 1.0 million (53 percent) were at least 50 years old.

An estimated 19.4 million U.S. viewers watched USA’s loss to Ghana on Saturday, making it the most watched soccer game ever in the U.S., according to data from The Nielsen Company.

The U.S. team qualifying for the knockout stages of the World Cup has certainly captured the hearts and minds of Americans online, but not quite as much as their draw in the opening game with England.

The average American TV audience for games played by Team USA are up 68% in 2010 compared to the 2006 World Cup, according to an analysis released this afternoon by The Nielsen Company.

No other World Cup controversy compares to the one issue that’s the talk of U.S. soccer fans across the online community: red cards.

An ad from Target that tied into the finale of LOST and a summer-themed Walmart ad were the most liked and most recalled ads of the most recent period tracked by Nielsen.

The final session of Nielsen’s 2010 Consumer 360 featured a highly anticipated debate between Wired Editor In Chief, Chris Anderson the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell on the topic of “Free.” This intellectual “cage match” (as Anderson called it) was moderated by Nielsen’s President of Media Product Leadership, Steve Hasker.

“Digital is good for TV,” said Time Warner Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes at The Nielsen Company’s Consumer 360 conference today. “TV is not only not dead, but it’s one of the fastest growing businesses. Ratings, time spent and viewership are all up.”

There’s a growing belief that TV “cord cutting” – when consumers reduce the amount of time they watch TV or drop their digital TV subscriptions altogether and move to viewing video online – is gaining traction. But that myth is busted.