Charlie Buchwalter

Having been to just about every ad:tech show during the last 10 years, I have to say that the show in San Francisco this week was one of the best ever. The Moscone West venue was great, the keynotes were superb, and sat through a number of panels with top-notch panelists and moderators. And there’s nothing better than reconnecting with some of the great friends I’ve made over the years in the interactive space.

The folks at socialmedia.com hosted the ad:tech Chairman’s reception Monday night, and I gave the killer list of attendees an overview of our Global Online Media Landscape” report. Immediately after my presentation, Tina Sharkey (Chairman & Co-Founder of babycenter.com) moderated a great panel discussion. One of the panelists, Carol Kruse, VP of Global Interactive Marketing at Coca Cola, made one of the most memorable comments ever during one of her responses. She was saying that ALL brand managers are doing everything they can to bring digital into their marketing mix.

I asked, “Carol: after the 5,000 or so online effectiveness studies that have been conducted over the last 10 years, and all the online folks whining that marketers aren’t spending more on online, why, all of a sudden, are brand managers at Coke wild about digital?” Of course, I was fully expecting to hear that Coke’s brand managers and researchers are finally responding to online’s performance metrics, which clearly speak for themselves, right?

Well, not quite. Her answer? “It’s really pretty simple. Digital is sexy now. After all, celebrities are all over social media.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I knew that Carol was speaking the truth. Many players have worked very hard for years to demonstrate the inherent value of a medium that we’re passionate about. And one gets the sense that after all these years, online has crossed the chasm.

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Read more from Charlie Buchwalter and the Nielsen Online team at the Connecting the Dots blog.

Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank takes a look at the economic and advertising impacts of the report.

Highlights Of The Report Include

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
• In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
• There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.
• In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.
• In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.

Read the full report.

Download the full press release