When a consumer thinks of a megabrand, she may think of Coke, Budweiser or Cheerios.  These are all category leaders and are certainly “mega” in terms of their recognition around the world and sales figures.  But looking beyond sheer size, these products are actually quite limited in their scope: soft drinks, beer and cereal, respectively.  The word “megabrands” has a slightly different meaning for consumer goods companies and marketers: it relates to taking a power brand and extending its equity across related product categories to drive growth and efficiencies.  For …

Joshua Hammond, Nielsen Online
Social media can be a great equalizer. Periodically we see a new consumer generated media (CGM) item that breaks barriers and demands a deeper dive. This month, we saw a true “David vs. Goliath” moment play out online for one of the most widely recognized brands in America.
In the spring of 2008, Dave Carroll and his band, the Sons of Maxwell, were traveling to Nebraska from Chicago on United Airlines. What should have been a routine journey turned into yet another cautionary tale for customer …

Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer & Shopper Insights
Over the latest six (4-week) periods ending 5/16/2009, store brand unit sales averaged a 5.7% increase in consumer-packaged-goods departments tracked by Nielsen in food, drug and mass-merchandisers (including Walmart).  Most of this growth is from edible departments (i.e., fresh meat, fresh produce, packaged meat, dairy, dry grocery, frozen and deli).  While branded unit sales declined, on average by 3.1%, unit sales in the last two periods were up 2.2% and off 1%, respectively.  While this is not a definitive sign that brands are turning the …

Tom Pirovano, Director, Industry Insights
Sales of store brands, or private label products, began to spike in 2007 just as we were seeing the first signs of an economic downturn. At first, these private label sales were driven by higher commodity prices, but volume growth began to catch up with dollar growth in mid-2008. As the economy continues to struggle, more and more consumers are replacing their branded products with private label equivalents. Store brands are up 10% to $84.4 billion in annual sales across categories …

Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online,
For today’s webinar, “All Brand Advertisers Are Not Created Equal: Attracting and Retaining Brand Advertisers to the Web” Nielsen Online CEO, John Burbank and I will talk about the changing nature of online advertising, a new way to look at advertisers, and the attributes of the sites that are doing the best job of attracting long-term partners. As a bit of a preview, I wanted to briefly discuss the subject of long-term partners. When we take a look at Fortune 1000 advertisers and their advertising habits online, …

ONLINE BRAND
TOTAL STREAMS
 (in 000s)
UNIQUE VIEWERS
(in 000s)

YouTube
4,762,883
76,746

Fox Interactive Media
278,375
16,053

Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network
223,044
6,935

MSN/Windows Live
205,018
12,035

Disney Online
171,249
10,341

Yahoo!
169,259
19,659

ESPN
123,123
5,827

Hulu
107,622
2,632

CNN Digital Network
106,383
8,111

Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network
87,441
3,892

Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus
Note: Online brands are ranked by video streams; data includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age.