Olympics sponsors and their competitors ramped up their August ad budgets to maximize their exposure during the month of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But according to Nielsen, many of China’s advertisers took a break from advertising in August, sending overall ad spending in China tumbling to levels last seen in May 2008, when the Sichuan earthquake hit and advertising was suspended for three days.
Advertising spending in China grew, year over year, by just 7% in August, Nielsen reported Monday.  In comparison, China’s ad spending grew by an average of 19% in the seven …

Growth (by value) of food sales at British supermarkets slowed to 5.4% during the 12 weeks ending October 4, compared with the same period in 2007, Nielsen reported Tuesday.
Flagging sales in September, when growth dipped to 4.5% — a full percentage point below August growth levels, drove the declines.
“Shoppers are still trading down,” Mike Watkins, senior manager, retailer services, Nielsen noted.  “Family shoppers in particular, are trying to save money, with 70% saying on they are looking to economize on grocery shopping — up from 63% in June.” 

Google and Yahoo! were again the number one- and number two-ranked Web brands in August, according to Nielsen Online.

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

1
Google
123,690
1:25:18

2
Yahoo!
117,702
3:22:31

3
MSN/Windows Live
103,953
2:21:25

4
Microsoft
93,558
12:38:39

5
AOL Media Network
93,070
3:33:46

6
YouTube
75,442
1:01:01

7
Fox Interactive Media
70,696
1:54:24

8
eBay
55,842
1:52:01

9
Wikipedia
52,987
0:21:24

10
Apple
48,766
1:10:42

Source: The Nielsen Company (August 1, 2008 – August 31, 2008).

Google (60% search share) and Yahoo! (18.1% search share) were the number one- and number two-ranked online search providers in the U.S. for August, according to Nielsen Online.
AT&T Worldnet Search (+203.8%) and Comcast Search (+30.9%) showed the largest year-over-year growth for the time period.

Provider
Searches
(in 000’s)
Year-Over-Year
Growth
Share
of Searches

All Search Providers
7,222,826
-7.7%
100.0%

Google Search
4,331,153
3.1%
60.0%

Yahoo! Search
1,304,889
-16.5%
18.1%

MSN/Windows Live Search
770,592
-23.8%
10.7%

AOL Search
376,331
-13.5%
5.2%

Ask.com Search
143,231
4.7%
2.0%

Comcast Search
45,438
30.9%
0.6%

My Web Search
38,550
-46.3%
0.5%

AT&T Worldnet Search
30,272
203.8%
0.4%

NexTag Search
17,901
-20.6%
0.2%

Dogpile.com Search
15,418
-27.8%
0.2%

Source: The Nielsen Company (August 1, 2008 - August 31, 2008)