NOTE: See the important update to this story here.
——–
David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online

Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock. That guy from Punk’d competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience. A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger. Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months with no small thanks to celebrity exposure. People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite …

While gas prices in the U.S. have fallen by nearly half since May 2008, online interest in hybrid vehicles remains strong. The new 2010 Honda Insight was just released in March and is generating online interest from a younger audience than the Prius. The demographic composition of a hybrid shopper is moving closer to the mainstream vehicle shopper’s profile.
Some insights on the Insight
The 2010 Honda Insight is having a tough time breaking out of the Prius’ shadow as the majority of consumers often compare the two vehicles. However, …

Charlie Buchwalter, Nielsen Online
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 …

Online engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released today by The Nielsen Company. This increased engagement is in part a result of a shift toward video content and social networking as popular online subcategories.
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 …

As the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced, Nielsen Online released data on unique visitors to online news sites for March 2009. MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News led the way, with each showing gains over last year’s traffic numbers. The BBC (up 61%), Fox News (up 48%) and McClatchy Newspaper Network (up 20%) reported solid gains while, Gannett Newspapers (down 11%), USA Today and CBS News (both down 7%) slid down from last year’s mark. The NY Times, which led all outlets with five Pulitzers, drew 7% more visitors than …

A recent video made by two rogue and rude Domino’s employees left a bad taste in the mouth of customers who watched it. But, thanks to some social media tipsters, Domino’s was able to issue their own YouTube response quickly as a remedy to the potentially brand damaging viral video. The buzz online about the brand spiked during the crisis.

Patrick Doyle, President, Domino’s U.S.A., thanked the online community for the tip in his video and the brand also created a twitter account @dpzinfo to communicate.

Brandon Eshman, Nielsen Online
If you think the internet can support unlimited content and you’ve been enjoying your all-you-can-eat web surfing… just wait. At the same time that consumers are increasing their use of the internet to view content at their convenience, some cable companies and ISPs are setting limits on how much content you can access in any given month – or risk paying a penalty for going over the limit the same way your phone company budgets your anytime minutes.
Comcast has levied a 250-gigabyte cap on its users, (that’s …

The Nielsen Company released March 2009 U.S. data for the Top Parent Companies/Divisions and Top Web Brands, as well as average Internet usage. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! led the way for parent companies online.

Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online
At this point it is well documented that the halcyon days of the yellow pages are pretty much done. A mix of eBay, Craigslist and local search have removed the need for this type of service from most people’s lives. The need for a big, bright, yellow local directory in paper form or online with some advertising thrown in, seems to be a hopelessly out-dated concept. If you’re SuperPages, what do you do? What services can you add that will make your offering …

Online advertising remains strong, even as ad spending has decreased across other media, and MySpace has benefited from this trend with several large-scale campaigns from auto makers.  But in recent months, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in terms of monthly unique audience and stickiness: its monthly unique audience grew 177 percent in the last year compared to a 9 percent decrease for MySpace and time per person on Facebook went from 1 hour 8 minutes in March 2008 to 3 hours 16 minutes in March …