Credit card use is growing by leaps and bounds in China, with the number of credit cards having doubled every year since 2003, China Daily reported Monday.
According to a recent Nielsen report, China’s young, urban generation is driving the growth.  Chinese consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 are the most active users of credit cards, a Nielsen survey of 11,500 Chinese consumers in 18 cities found.
With Chinese banks racing to issue credit cards, and overseas banks expected to join the fray, Chinese consumers will reap the rewards of …

Fans worldwide are heading online to take advantage of around-the-clock access to updated Olympics content and video, Nielsen Online reported Tuesday.
During the first week of competition, an average of 930,000 fans per day, from ten countries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, visited Beijing2008.cn, the official Website of the Beijing Games, according to Nielsen.  On several days during that period, traffic to the site exceeded one million unique visitors.
Within China, traffic to Beijing2008.cn, averaged 1.5 million unique browsers per day during the period, according to ChinaRank, Nielsen’s China-based Internet traffic measurement partner.

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Despite losing to Cuba in a closely contested game Wednesday evening, the Chinese women’s volleyball team claimed the top TV rating of all Olympics events broadcast on Chinese television on Wednesday, August 13, AGB Nielsen Media Research reported Thursday.
In China, 143 million viewers watched the China vs. Cuba game on CCTV 1 Wednesday evening, according to AGB Nielsen.  In comparison, 84 million Chinese tuned in for the men’s weightlifting 77kg final that aired on CCTV 2 during the same time period.
In three games on August 9, 11, and 13, the Chinese …

Mobile Internet users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets are likely to visit entertainment-themed websites while on the go, according to a report released Tuesday by Nielsen.
Meanwhile users across the U.S. and Europe commonly use their phones to access news and information online, Nielsen found. 
Entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top five categories visited via the mobile Web in all four BRIC countries, while email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users. 
In the U.S., entertainment, …

The total Chinese television audience for Olympics broadcasts on CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, was up by 45% on Saturday, August 9, the official start date of the Olympic Games — compared with TV viewing levels from just a few days before the Olympics began, according to Nielsen.
On Sunday, August 10, the men’s weightlifting 56Kg class final, in which Chinese player Long Qingquan won the gold medal, was the most popular TV event among Chinese viewers.  More than 129 million Chinese tuned in for the final, which drew an average audience …

Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, Chinese Olympics fans are turning to multimedia sources for coverage of the 2008 Beijing Games, according to a recent Nielsen survey of Internet users in China.
In addition to watching the Games on TV, three of four people in China will keep abreast of Olympics events via streaming online video, one-third will rely on mobile phone text updates, and 14% will view video clips of the Games on their mobile phones, Nielsen’s survey found.
Two in 10 Chinese plan to use online video streaming as their main method of …

Television viewing in the U.S. spiked by 17% during the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games in 1996, while TV viewing in Australia during the 2000 Sydney Summer Games jumped by 39%, according to a recent Nielsen report analyzing media trends from past Olympics.
Nielsen’s report also found that advertising spending in Olympic host countries grew significantly in both the U.S. and Greece in the years following the 1996 and 2004 Olympics. 
Only Australia saw declines in ad spending following the 2000 summer Games.  Those decreases can be attributed to general cutbacks in spending in the …

Web surfing is booming in China.  The New York Times and CNN.com reported Friday that China recently surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest Internet population. 
In June, there were 253 million people online in China, the government reported Friday.  The new figures indicate that China’s Internet population grew by 56% in the last year. 
In comparison, the stories noted that the U.S. had approximately 223.1 million Internet users in June, according to Nielsen Online. 

Ninety-eight percent of Chinese people can name the five Fuwa who will serve as the official mascots of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, according to recent research conducted by Nielsen.
The survey, conducted in late June, also found that the Fuwa are popular in China.  Sixty percent of respondents said they “like” or “really like” them, while more than 20% were neutral, and just 15% said they “dislike” the Fuwa.
Those who recognize the Fuwa also appear to be spending money on official Olympic merchandise featuring their images.  Fifty-seven percent of the respondents …

Advertisers spent a record $88.5 billion across 12 key markets in the Asia Pacific region during the fourth quarter of 2007, Nielsen Media Research Asia Pacific reported today. 
Overall, TV, newspaper, and magazine ad spending rose by 12% from 2006 to 2007 across the markets surveyed for the report. 
India (+31%), Indonesia (+17%), China (+15%), and Malaysia (+15%) showed the strongest growth, while Singapore (-1%) and Taiwan (-1%) registered the only ad spending declines. 
The data reveals that China, which claimed 61% of the ad spending for the region in 2007, has emerged …