More than 48 million viewers across 34 million homes tuned into to President Obama’s State of the Union address which was broadcast on 11 networks.

Over the past six months, Canadian consumers have stopped talking about recession and changed the conversation to recovery.

Today’s presence of underwater mortgages, or homes with negative equity, seem to be correlated to two common regional U.S. population trends: domestic immigration from the Northeastern region to the South and Southwestern and migration from coastal California inland.

A North American snapshot of Nielsen’s Global Economic Current finds the U.S. and Canada with improving consumer confidence, but still hampered by timid spending.

Tapping expert knowledge across the media, consumer goods, advertising, telecom, entertainment, online and sports sectors, Nielsen offers what’s likely in store for 2010.

Nordic consumers have more confidence in the economy and their personal finances than the rest of Europe and are increasingly ready to spend, according to the latest edition of the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Survey.

With projected weak holiday sales this season and deal-seeking activities rampant, online retailers have an opportunity to gain share through their own web sites and social media outlets.

Companies can increase advertising effectiveness by 30-40% if they more closely analyze how well each marketing activity performs for each brand. Eight guiding principles help marketers maximize ROI.

The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago helped propel the growth of the European Union. Today, the EU economy is bigger than the United States and is still growing. Will the EU challenge U.S. historical economic dominance on a global scale?

Europe experienced a modest volume growth of 1% in the third quarter, down 0.9% compared to the prior quarter. However, this growth is still ahead of the United States.