Chinese are more likely to travel this week for the National Day Golden Week holiday than they were earlier this year during the Chinese New Year holiday, Nielsen reported Tuesday.
According to a survey conducted by Nielsen, six in 10 Chinese plan to travel between September 29 and October 5 for Golden Week, while just 42% of Chinese reported making plans to travel this past February for Chinese New Year celebrations. 

Tourism to China is expected to surge, following the Beijing Summer Games.
According to a 16-market survey conducted by Nielsen after the Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies, consumers throughout the world are increasingly interested in traveling to mainland China. 
Forty-five percent of those surveyed after the Opening ceremony said they intended to travel to mainland China at some point.  Following the Closing Ceremony, that percentage increased to 51%.  For 80% of the respondents, who had never visited mainland China, it would their first trip to the country.
Meanwhile, respondents who said they had …

Among the many winners at the recent Summer Olympic Games: the city of Beijing.
According to a survey conducted by Nielsen after the closing ceremony, seven in 10 viewers across 16 countries and territories said Beijing appeared more “modern” and “high-tech” than they had expected.
Beijing also looked cleaner and greener than many viewers expected — 56% said the city’s physical environment exceeded their expectations.
Nine in 10 foreigners who visited Beijing for the Olympics also told Nielsen the city’s Olympics venues were “good” or “very good.”
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Olympic athletes broke 132 Olympics records and set 43 new world records during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.
Meanwhile, Olympics fans who logged on to the Internet to follow the events around the clock set a new online precedent during the Games,  Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.
Olympics Web Portals
In the U.S., NBC, an official broadcast partner for the event, drew an average of 18 million (week one) to 18.9 million unique visitors (week two) to its Olympics website during the Games.
Yahoo’s Olympics section drove more traffic than NBC’s site, but visitors to NBCOlympics.com …

DATE 
NETWORK
VIEWERS (P2+)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2008
(OPENING CEREMONY)
NBC
34,891,000

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 2008
NBC
24,082,000

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 2008
NBC
32,256,000

MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 2008
NBC
30,173,000

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2008
NBC
34,014,000

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2008
NBC
27,656,000

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 2008
NBC
29,708,000

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2008
NBC
26,071,000

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008
NBC
31,593,000

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2008
NBC
27,184,000

MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2008
NBC
26,374,000

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2008
NBC
26,629,000

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2008
NBC
24,755,000

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 2008
NBC
22,438,000

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008
NBC
17,876,000

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2008
NBC
16,756,000

SUNDAY, AUGUST 24, 2008
(CLOSING CEREMONY)
NBC
27,834,000

AVERAGE OF PRIMETIME OLYMPICS COVERAGE
NBC
27,690,000

Source: The Nielsen Company (August 8, 2008 – August 24, 2008)

As athletes continued to break world records in the last days of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Beijing Games’ set a record of its own – as the most-watched Olympics ever.   
Global television broadcasts during the first ten days of the Games (August 8 – 17) attracted a cumulative TV audience of 4.4 billion viewers — or almost two-thirds of the world’s population, according to Nielsen.
In contrast, the 2004 Athens Summer Games attracted a total of 3.9 billion viewers worldwide, while the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney drew 3.6 billion total viewers.
Nielsen’s global audience estimates are …

More than half-way through the 2008 Beijing Olympics, U.S. fans are continuing to follow the Games online in strong numbers, Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.
The top two U.S.-based Olympics online destinations, Yahoo Olympics and NBC Olympics, drew an average of 4.7 million and 4.3 million unique visitors each day between August 8 and August 18.
According to Nielsen, Olympics-related websites in the U.S. are drawing slightly larger audiences on work days than weekends. 
Nielsen also reported that daily traffic to NBC’s Olympics site typically peaked at noon during the first work week of the …

Among the many Olympics winners so far are a handful of advertisers, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Ads created especially for the Beijing Games by Coca-Cola, General Electric, Oreo, and Visa were among the best-remembered and most-liked commercials during the first week of the Beijing Olympics, according to Nielsen IAG, which uses an online panel to track the performance of advertising.
A Coca-Cola ad in which animated birds use straws swiped from Coke bottles to construct a nest resembling the Olympic stadium in Beijing was especially popular with Olympics viewers, Nielsen reported.
An …

A handful of multinational companies are competing for the rights to put their corporate name on Beijing’s iconic “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium following the Olympics, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The move comes with some risk, the Journal noted, citing a Starbucks in Beijing’s Forbidden City that was forced to close after Chinese bloggers argued it was inappropriate to put the cafe inside a national treasure.
But National Stadium Co., which manages the “Bird’s Nest,” has already considered that.  The company told the Journal that a recent survey conducted by Nielsen found …

Heading into Thursday night’s women’s gymnastics individual all-around finals, American gymnast Shawn Johnson leads her top competitors in online buzz, according to Nielsen Online.
Fan buzz between July 28 and August 13 overwhelmingly focused on Johnson, who was more than twice as likely to be discussed by bloggers than her teammate Nastia Liukin. 
Liukin was ranked second on Nielsen’s list of the seven most buzzworthy gymnasts competing in the individual finals.  China’s Jiang Yuyuan rounded out the top three.

ATHLETE
COUNTRY
INDEX

Shawn Johnson
U.S.
100

Nastia Liukin
U.S.
43

Jiang Yuyuan
China
16

Anna Pavlova
Russia
11

Yang Yilin
China
11

Steliana Nistor
Romania
8

Ksenia Semenova
Russia
3

Source: The Nielsen Company (July 28, 2008 …