Nielsen’s analysis of online video viewing habits in March shows that more than 9.6 billion streams were viewed by an estimated 130 million web users. In total streams, the figure represents a nearly 9% jump over the previous month, and 38.8% increase over figures released for March 2008.
YouTube, hulu, and Yahoo! were the top three sites for streaming video, serving up more than 6 billion video streams among them.

Determining which car to buy is an important decision, and usually requires a fair amount of research on the part of the buyer.  Thankfully, the Internet has made that process much easier, and New Zealanders have taken to the web with gusto: 84 percent use the Internet for that purpose, according to Nielsen Online.  Visiting used car dealers and consulting with friends and family were the second and third most popular options, respectively.
But buyers aren’t the only ones who benefit, as 62 percent of sellers use the Internet as a …

Monitoring traffic to three major web properties – ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and CBS Sports – during the recent NCAA Basketball Tournament shows a spike in activity over last year (Y-O-Y) and the boost in traffic compared to the previous month (M-O-M).

Unique Audience  And % Change

Site
Mar-08
Feb-09
Mar-09
M-O-M
Y-O-Y

CBS Sports
15,106,000
10,684,000
18,127,000
70%
20%

ESPN
19,844,000
17,181,000
22,938,000
34%
16%

Yahoo! Sports
19,432,000
24,953,000
25,515,000
2%
31%

Source: Nielsen Online

Additionally, video streaming on CBS Sports saw massive gains during the tournament, with nearly a 300% gain in unique users watching video. Those viewers racked up more than 380 million minutes of viewing time in March.

CBS …

Brand advertising budgets took a hit in 2008, with expenditures dropping 2.6 percent compared to 2007. While most media suffered, two bright spots were Hispanic cable TV, where ad spending grew 9.6 percent, and cable TV, where growth was 7.8 percent.  But what has happened to online advertising?
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing advertisers and web sites is the plethora of sites competing for scarce advertising dollars with little to offer in the way of differentiation.  Unfortunately, no single formula or strategy has emerged to guide advertisers looking to build brand …

Jon Gibs
The internet is in an increasingly funny place. We’ve developed a media that allows an extraordinary amount of targeting and advertising measurement structures previously unheard of in other media. We track impressions, ad engagement, clicks, view-throughs, conversions, post-buy demographics, time per ad, branding effect and offline ROI. We can measure, and even plan by, just about any construct an advertiser would like.
The funny part is we can’t seem to get our head around GRPs. This is something I’ve written about in some length in the past …

By Joe Colacurcio
Recently, several online automotive enthusiast blogs have taken unique opportunities to directly engage with their audiences via live, combined chats, integrating commonly utilized platforms such as Twitter.com and the blogs themselves. This type of direct engagement shows the continually evolving potential for such enthusiast channels to form new “touch points” and influence online consumers in new ways.
On February 18, 2009, editors of the blogs Autoblog.com, Jalopnik.com, and KickingTires.com joined up for a live chat with online automotive enthusiasts to facilitate discussion and field questions regarding the viability plans …

Charlie Buchwalter & David Wiesenfeld, Nielsen Online
More and more researchers are waking up to the reality that mining the growing volume of conversations on blogs, message boards and social networking sites (i. e., “listening” to consumers) can provide timely, penetrating insights on a wide range of issues and brands.
A series of parallel studies we conducted with Procter & Gamble demonstrates that both surveys and listening are often required to tell the whole story. We looked at a number of brands and products: everything from orange juice, to razor blades, to …

Melissa Davies
My colleague Pete Blackshaw recently hosted a conference call through Nielsen Online’s Social Media and Advocacy Round Table, focused on how brands can leverage the power of consumers’ contributions to the online community. In the call, Scott Wilder, Small Business Online Communities manager for software publisher Intuit, described listening to customer feedback through Intuit’s call center and realizing that customers thought their problems were unique, and that they felt alone in trying to deal with these problems. The solution: Intuit created an online community to help users connect to …

Meet the newest recession-fighting ally in the scrimmage for consumer sales: online advertising. Even discretionary product categories taking a hit at the register can build market share through online presence. Here’s how.

Consumers have more choices than ever from which to access media: traditional television, the Internet, and mobile devices like cell phones and iPods.  As more options exist, they serve to actually increase the amount of time people view media as opposed cutting into viewership of one format or another.  Despite the array of options, television continues to be the primary way Americans of all ages consume media.  In the last quarter of 2008, the average Nielsen household watched more than 151 hours of television per month.  Internet users logged on …