Example:  The data indicates that 62.1 million home and work Internet users visited at least one of the Wikimedia Foundation-owned sites or launched a Wikimedia Foundation-owned application during the month, and each person spent, on average, a total of 17 minutes and 7 seconds at one or more of their sites or applications.

The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single company or division. The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.

Quarter-over-Quarter Growth in Online Display Ad Spend by U.S. Consumer Goods Industry

“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 grow as rapidly without major brands beginning to devote larger portions of their ad budgets to the Web.  We are seeing some of that happen now with Consumer Packaged Goods companies, which are growing their budgets despite a down economy,” said David Wiesenfeld, vice president, online marketing solutions at Nielsen.

YouTube was the top entertainment web site for consumer product companies in 2009, with 637.7 million display ad impressions and a 24 percent share of all advertising in the genre.  AOL.com and Oprah.com rounded out the top three.  YouTube was also the fastest growing site among the top 10, increasing 572 percent year-over-year.

Read the full release regarding consumer product online display ads here.

Top 10 Search Providers for May 2009 (U.S.) 

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

Google topped the list of top 10 web brands, with a unique audience of 131.2 million.  Yahoo! took second place, with a unique audience of 118.9 million, followed by MSN/Windows Live at 101.5 million. 

Read the full press release here.

AOL: It Has Staying Power

During the dot.com era the AOL brand was synonymous with the Web for many users and was known for its dial-up access. Now that most users have transitioned to broadband access, AOL has made a name for itself through its media network that includes sites like TMZ. In April 2009, AOL LLC had 86.8 million unique visitors, making it the No. 4 online parent company, reaching 52 percent of the active Internet universe. Among the top 10 parent companies, AOL was No. 1 when ranked by average time spent per person, with 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Globally, the AOL parent company ranked No. 6 in April, with 132.2 million unique visitors.

Top 10 Parent Companies Ranked by Unique Audience for April 2009 (U.S., Home and Work)

Source: Nielsen NetView

Top 10 Global* Parent Companies Ranked by Unique Audience for April 2009 (Home and Work)

*Global Data takes into account the following countries: U.S., U.K., Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and Japan
Source: Nielsen NetView

The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single company or division. The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.

Google searches accounted for 63.5 percent of all Web searches with nearly 5.4 billion queries. Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.com continued to round out the top five.

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

Google searches accounted for 62.8 percent of all Web searches with more than 5.9 billion queries.  Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.com continued to round out the top five.

Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

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

Google searches accounted for nearly 63% of all Web searches, with 5.4 billion queries. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

Google searches accounted for more than 64% of all Web searches, with almost 5.2 billion queries.  Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings on CNET.com and Silicon.com, as well as in Mediaweek and Media Post.

Review September and October 2008 search results.