YouTube continued to rank as the No. 1 video Web brand with 5.5 billion total streams in April. Meanwhile, Hulu continued its explosive growth trajectory, increasing 490 percent in total streams year-over-year, from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009, making it the fastest growing brand among the top 10.
“Historically short form, clip-length video has ruled streaming on the Web—as demonstrated by YouTube’s top spot month after month,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media & analytics, Nielsen Online. “Hulu, along with pure-play providers like Veoh and …

Women age 25-54 with at least one child — the so-called “Power Moms” – represent nearly 20 percent of the active online population, according to Nielsen Online, and they are wielding more influence than ever.
So what are Power Moms doing online?  Where they spend time varies by demographic categories.  For example, “Established Moms,” those aged 40-50 with three or more children at home, are heavy online shoppers, with Shopzilla.com the most popular site.  Newbie Moms, aged 25-34 with one or two children at home, also enjoy online shopping, but social …

Swine Flu, Easter, and Somali Pirates topped Nielsen’s monthly index of most blogged news stories for April 2009, according to Nielsen’s just released top 10 most-blogged topics report.
“Understanding what is currently important to bloggers is essential to marketers since we know that highly blogged about topics are important indicators of conversational sustainability and impact,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president, digital strategic services, Nielsen Online. “Moreover, those topics with high blog links tend to embed themselves prominently in search results.”
Top 10 Blogged Topics, April 2009

RANK
NAME

1
Flu Outbreak

2
Easter

3
Somali Pirates

4
2009 NFL …

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 …

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.

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 …

The growth of affordable broadband service has sent more Australians to the Internet to listen to their favorite radio stations and, increasingly, to watch TV.  According to the annual Internet and Technology Report compiled by Nielsen Online, traditional radio consumption by Internet users declined by 1.1 hours in December 2008, while the total number of radio hours – broadcast and online – increased by nearly 2 hours amongst urban dwellers, thanks to faster connection speeds allowing more reliable streaming radio programs.  Overall online radio consumption increased to 4.9 hours in …

Determining which car to buy is an important decision, and usually requires a fair amount of research on the part of the buyer.  Thankfully, the Internet has made that process much easier, and New Zealanders have taken to the web with gusto: 84 percent use the Internet for that purpose, according to Nielsen Online.  Visiting used car dealers and consulting with friends and family were the second and third most popular options, respectively.
But buyers aren’t the only ones who benefit, as 62 percent of sellers use the Internet as a …

Charlie Buchwalter & David Wiesenfeld, Nielsen Online
More and more researchers are waking up to the reality that mining the growing volume of conversations on blogs, message boards and social networking sites (i. e., “listening” to consumers) can provide timely, penetrating insights on a wide range of issues and brands.
A series of parallel studies we conducted with Procter & Gamble demonstrates that both surveys and listening are often required to tell the whole story. We looked at a number of brands and products: everything from orange juice, to razor blades, to …