Ken Cassar, Vice President, Industry Insights, Online Division
I was very interested to hear the news yesterday that Amazon had acquired Zappos for $847 million in cash and stock. Since Zappos founder Tony Hsieh asked and answered some of his own questions about the deal in a letter to employees so I thought it’d be useful to engage in a Q&A with myself about the deal.
1. Why did Amazon buy Zappos?
A: Two numbers answer that succinctly: About 5 percent of Amazon’s sales are apparel/footwear sales, compared …

Roger Entner, SVP, Head of Research and Insights, Telecom Practice
With the telecom landscape in constant flux, carriers continue to find unique ways to add to their bottom lines. While the Kindle, Amazon’s wireless reading device , has been touted as a savior for the newspaper industry, it also represents the first example of the long-predicted ad hoc subscription model for Sprint, which provides the wireless access for Kindle as subsidized by Amazon. Sales of the Kindle drove a majority of Sprint’s 394,000 wholesale additions …

Ken Cassar
I’ve been preparing for our upcoming Webinar on Retail Coping Strategies, where we will provide constructive advice to retailers on how they can best cope with the challenging retail environment that we’re in. This has led me to think about companies that are holding up well through the recession.
There are three companies that I’m particularly interested in: Walmart, Amazon, and Hyundai. Walmart’s US sales grew by 6.7 percent, profits by 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Amazon just announced that Q4 2008 sales were …

Google was the top-ranked Web brand in November, drawing more than 127 million unique visitors during the month, Nielsen Online reported Tuesday.  Yahoo! and MSN/Windows Live rounded out the top three, with unique audiences of just over 117 million and 104 million visitors, respectively.

Rank
Brand
Unique Audience
(in 000s)
Time Per Person
(hh:mm:ss)

1
Google
127,656
1:23:40

2
Yahoo!
117,656
3:17:36

3
MSN/Windows Live
104,090
2:13:19

4
Microsoft
95,543
0:45:44

5
AOL Media Network
86,308
3:43:45

6
YouTube
81,882
1:01:33

7
Fox Interactive Media
69,838
1:39:31

8
Wikipedia
58,335
0:18:39

9
Amazon
57,682
0:25:33

10
eBay
55,438
1:43:41

Source: The Nielsen Company (November 2008).

View the full press release.
View the top U.S. Web brands for September and October 2008.

Web traffic from home and work to sites included in Nielsen Online’s Holiday eShopping Index increased 10% year over year on Cyber Monday, Nielsen Online reported Tuesday.
Unique visitors to the sites included in the Index reached 35.9 million, a 13% increase over this year’s Black Friday Web traffic.
Many of the top online retail destinations on Cyber Monday were the same as those on Black Friday. eBay drew the largest unique audience (10.6 million), while Amazon and Wal-Mart claimed second and third places, with 9 million and 5.2 million unique visitors, …

American consumers will continue to shift their gift buying online this holiday season, citing convenience, time saving, and price according to Nielsen Online. Amid the current economic downturn, 53% of consumers cite price as a reason to buy online, compared with 46% last year. However, convenience continues to trump price as 76% of consumers cite the ability to shop 24 hours a day and 74% cite time saving as key factors for choosing online shopping.
The results are based on a Nielsen Online survey, conducted November 6-11, intended to gauge online …

Has the era of the DVD passed? 
Today, the likes of Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Veoh, and Hulu are betting it has.  Instead, they’re throwing their resources into developing a new video source: online streaming movies.
These new media titans may have the right idea, according to recent research by Nielsen that found online streaming video usage almost doubled in the U.S. between 2006 and 2007.  A separate survey conducted by Nielsen in 2007 found that 40% of respondents had streamed some type of video, while just over 10% had downloaded a …