Charlie Buchwalter, Nielsen Online
Having been to just about every ad:tech show during the last 10 years, I have to say that the show in San Francisco this week was one of the best ever. The Moscone West venue was great, the keynotes were superb, and sat through a number of panels with top-notch panelists and moderators. And there’s nothing better than reconnecting with some of the great friends I’ve made over the years in the interactive space.
The folks at socialmedia.com hosted the ad:tech Chairman’s reception Monday night, and I gave …

With several high profile games released in the past few months, chalk one up for Halo Wars.  According to Nielsen’s weekly Video Game Tracking survey, the title generated the highest definite purchase interest among games in the week of their release for any title released through April 18 this year. In the week leading up to its March 3rd release in the US, 23 percent of gamers had strong purchase interest for the real-time strategy off-shoot of the immensely popular Halo trilogy. It narrowly beat Resident Evil 5 which garnered …

As the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced, Nielsen Online released data on unique visitors to online news sites for March 2009. MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News led the way, with each showing gains over last year’s traffic numbers. The BBC (up 61%), Fox News (up 48%) and McClatchy Newspaper Network (up 20%) reported solid gains while, Gannett Newspapers (down 11%), USA Today and CBS News (both down 7%) slid down from last year’s mark. The NY Times, which led all outlets with five Pulitzers, drew 7% more visitors than …

A recent video made by two rogue and rude Domino’s employees left a bad taste in the mouth of customers who watched it. But, thanks to some social media tipsters, Domino’s was able to issue their own YouTube response quickly as a remedy to the potentially brand damaging viral video. The buzz online about the brand spiked during the crisis.

Patrick Doyle, President, Domino’s U.S.A., thanked the online community for the tip in his video and the brand also created a twitter account @dpzinfo to communicate.

Brandon Eshman, Nielsen Online
If you think the internet can support unlimited content and you’ve been enjoying your all-you-can-eat web surfing… just wait. At the same time that consumers are increasing their use of the internet to view content at their convenience, some cable companies and ISPs are setting limits on how much content you can access in any given month – or risk paying a penalty for going over the limit the same way your phone company budgets your anytime minutes.
Comcast has levied a 250-gigabyte cap on its users, (that’s …

The Nielsen Company released March 2009 U.S. data for the Top Parent Companies/Divisions and Top Web Brands, as well as average Internet usage. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! led the way for parent companies online.

Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online
At this point it is well documented that the halcyon days of the yellow pages are pretty much done. A mix of eBay, Craigslist and local search have removed the need for this type of service from most people’s lives. The need for a big, bright, yellow local directory in paper form or online with some advertising thrown in, seems to be a hopelessly out-dated concept. If you’re SuperPages, what do you do? What services can you add that will make your offering …

Online advertising remains strong, even as ad spending has decreased across other media, and MySpace has benefited from this trend with several large-scale campaigns from auto makers.  But in recent months, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in terms of monthly unique audience and stickiness: its monthly unique audience grew 177 percent in the last year compared to a 9 percent decrease for MySpace and time per person on Facebook went from 1 hour 8 minutes in March 2008 to 3 hours 16 minutes in March …

The growth of affordable broadband service has sent more Australians to the Internet to listen to their favorite radio stations and, increasingly, to watch TV.  According to the annual Internet and Technology Report compiled by Nielsen Online, traditional radio consumption by Internet users declined by 1.1 hours in December 2008, while the total number of radio hours – broadcast and online – increased by nearly 2 hours amongst urban dwellers, thanks to faster connection speeds allowing more reliable streaming radio programs.  Overall online radio consumption increased to 4.9 hours in …

We have seen that many “Power Moms,” women 25-54 with at least one child, are using the Web to provide information and advice, as well as to build relationships with other parents. They are also becoming increasingly engaged with online video. In February 2009, 13.1 million Power Moms, 10 percent of all online video viewers, viewed video content online.
Sites like Momversation.com, where well-known mom bloggers create video conversations, and newbaby.com where moms contribute vlogs, speak to a broader trend of receptivity of video content among Power Moms.
Interestingly, among the top …