It’s 2009: Do you know where your kids are?
They might be on the Internet, or gaming or texting… but they could also be be watching live TV, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. At the annual What Teens Want conference in New York, The Nielsen Company presented How Teens Use Media, which argues once you look past the hype – American teens are not as alien in their media usage as you might expect. Sure, it might sound hip and trendy to suggest they’re too busy texting, Twittering …

David Wiesenfeld, Vice President, Insights & Innovation, Nielsen Online
What’s driving all the excitement and energy around “listening?” After all, the basic notion of “listening” – observing and interpreting naturally occurring consumer behavior – is not new. In fact, when the first professional market researchers sat in consumers’ living rooms and talked with them about their lives and their needs, they were engaging in “listening” as much as they were asking questions. These pioneers were literally the eyes and ears of their organizations. They brought consumers to life in ways that …

For many consumers, skimping on a new car upgrade has created a lot of pent-up demand. While it’s unclear when buyers will be ready to buy autos en masse again, a new report from The Nielsen Co. suggests one of the best ways to reach them now is via online advertising, particularly video.
The report, released this month, found many consumers were still looking, but just not buying during the first four months of the year. However, 12 percent of the U.S. population said they will probably or definitely buy a …

Alex Burmaster
Last month, we were honored to win a ‘BOBI’ award for “Most Innovative Approach” from the British Healthcare Business Intelligence Association for our recent work with Pfizer. Their challenge was to monitor what consumers were saying online about Champix, the company’s smoking cessation aid, and to that end, we created a research methodology using our BuzzMetrics solutions.
Whilst winning is, of course, fantastic, what was most important for us was that the client was so happy with the work that they submitted us for the award in the first place.
What’s …

Image-based online ad spending by consumer goods companies increased 57 percent over the last two years, growing from $99.8 million in the first quarter of 2007 to $156.2 million in the same quarter in 2009, according to new Nielsen research.
Quarter-over-Quarter Growth in Online Display Ad Spend by U.S. Consumer Goods Industry

Quarter
Estimated Spend
Quarter-over-Quarter Growth

Q1 2007
99,814,750
n/a

Q1 2008
122,785,505
23%

Q1 2009
156,221,975
27%

Source: Nielsen AdRelevance

“While direct response advertising has been very successful on the Internet, with categories like finance and travel devoting a significant portion of their budget to online advertising, on-line advertising will not continue to …

Nielsen Online today reported data for the top U.S. search providers, ranked by total searches, the top companies/divisions and web brands in May 2009.  Total searches increased 20 percent over May 2008.
Top 10 Search Providers for May 2009 (U.S.) 

Provider
Searches (000)
YOY Growth
Share of Searches

All Search
9,440,467
20.3%
100.0%

Google Search
5,968,840
28.2%
63.2%

Yahoo! Search
1,625,253
22.3%
17.2%

MSN/Windows Live Search
891,502
-14.6%
9.4%

AOL Search
364,784
13.1%
3.9%

Ask.com Search
205,438
21.9%
2.2%

My Web Search
77,283
44.7%
0.8%

Comcast Search
55,853
33.1%
0.6%

Yellow Pages Search
33,141
n/a*
0.4%

NexTag Search
27,189
29.9%
0.3%

AT&T Worldnet Search
17,719
-32.4%
0.2%

Source: Nielsen MegaView Search

 * A year-over-year comparison is not possible because of a definitional change to Yellow Pages Search.

By Jennifer Volz and Joe Colacurcio
On the eve of General Motor’s bankruptcy, New York Times blog writer, James G. Cobb, asked consumers to share their experiences with GM vehicles. His personal contribution relates to family vehicles, from deep pride in his parents’ first new Chevy to a later Biscayne exhibiting various quality issues that would ultimately be cited as a reason neither he nor his family have owned GM products since.
This experiential theme resonates among consumers responding to the blog post. Within the 57 percent of consumers expressing mixed to …

Jon Stewart
When Microsoft rebranded their search engine, Yusuf Mehdi explained that they settled on the name Bing “because it sounds off in our heads when we think about that moment of discovery and decision making – when you resolve those important tasks.” Still in the early weeks of the launch, he is probably hoping that Bing resonates more like the sweet sound of trialability.
With only 22 percent of all active U.S. searchers using MSN/Windows Live on a monthly basis, user trial and acquisition is Bing’s first critical hurdle to overcome. …

Nielsen Online today released overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for May 2009.  Compared to the same month in 2008, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)

 
May-09
Year-Over-Year
Month-Over-Month

Unique Viewers (000)
133,797
12.8%
14.7%

Total Streams (000)
10,043,049
34.8%
6.2%

Streams per Viewer
75.1
19.6%
-7.3%

Time per Viewer (min)
188.7
48.9%
-8.3%

Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus

 Note: Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising. 
YouTube was far and away the top online destination by video streams, with more than 6 billion total streams during …

Value Remapping of the Carriers’ Handset Portfolio
Roger Entner, SVP, Head of Research and Insights, Telecom Practice
As widely expected, Apple announced the new iPhone 3GS at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. This latest iPhone offers incremental improvements over the iPhone 3G at the existing $199/$299 price points. The bigger news that few, if any, expected was that the older iPhone 3G was going to continue to be sold, but at the new $99 price point.  It is self-evident that this price cut will drive sales. According to Nielsen’s Mobile Insights …