Julie A. Enzweiler, Automotive – Research Director, Nielsen Online
The automotive industry was hit by a Mack truck the second half of 2008 with all-time high gas prices, a shrinking economy and growing consumer fear of making a large purchase.  Advertising spend reflects how the automotive industry reacted to the crisis, highlighting channels that are the most vital to intercepting new vehicle prospects.
The first half of 2008 showed growth in advertising spend over 2007 for TV (+2%) and Internet (+55%) while outdoor, magazine, radio and paper decreased (20%, 18%, 14%, and …

Starting March 30, experts from The Nielsen Company will participate in the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) convention and expo in New York City. During the event, Nielsen Wire will provide updates, overviews and excerpts of key presentations and sessions.
Listening And Social Networks
Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics, will be facilitating a Listening Zone Learning Presentation focused on social networking, citing the importance of fostering a listening environment. The presentation will feature new data from Nielsen Online’s social networking study and demonstrate how brands are getting the most out of their …

Rochester, NY, is the top U.S. city for newspaper readership, according to a new analysis of Integrated Newspaper Audience (INA) data from Scarborough Research, a partnership between Arbitron and The Nielsen Company. A higher percentage of adults in Rochester, NY, are reading newspapers in print or online than in any other U.S. market. The INA of Rochester is 87% – meaning that 87% of adults in the Rochester DMA read a printed newspaper, a newspaper’s website, or did both during the past week. Following closely behind are Cleveland, OH and …

More New Zealanders than ever are turning to the internet to shop, according to a new report from Nielsen Online.  Those who shop online grew to 45 percent in the fourth quarter 2008, up from 39 percent for the same period a year before.  The adult online shopping population now stands at a record 1.4 million people out of a total population of about 4.5 million.
The trend towards shopping online cuts across most categories, with the most popular categories being airline tickets, books/magazine, clothing and other travel-related services such as …

About 6.5 million Australians belong to an online social network, and more than two-thirds of Internet users looked at other people’s content on social networking sites during 2008 according to Nielsen Online’s latest consumer generated media report.  The most popular sites are Facebook – which showed 32 percent growth in 2008, MySpace, which recorded a 2 percent gain and Flickr, which grew by 14 percent.  Among those who blog, MySpace was the favored vehicle, with almost one-third of users preferring it over any other site.  Twitter penetration remains low – …

Nielsen Online analyst Jon Gibs takes a look at the news and newspaper industry in his latest post and welcomes your input.
“The economic situation we’re in has had many casualties, banks, the housing market, free soda, the works. But one of the most notable has been newspapers. I’ve posted in the past on the fate of the Christian Science Monitor, and the Rocky Mountain News has now said its goodbye as well. I think it is safe to say that these are not the end of a trend; they are …

While buyers may be delaying new vehicle purchases, consumers still actively post tens of thousands of brand and vehicle related messages each month. In its latest Automotive Industry Overview, Nielsen Online found that consumers have enthusiastically responded online to the Hyundai Assurance program (which allows leasers to return a vehicle with no penalty if they lose their income). Since the plan debuted in January, 2009, more than 1,900 messages have been posted, helped by general curiosity, praise from the media, Super Bowl commercials and the Assurance Plus addition in February. …

Australians are abandoning desktop PCs and flocking to laptops and other wireless devices, according to Nielsen Online’s Internet and Technology Report released today.  In the last year, household ownership of desktop computers declined 10 percent, while ownership of laptops jumped from 49 percent to 63.  Wireless LAN ownership increased more than 20 points in the last year and now stands at 53 percent.  Additionally, broadband subscriptions reached 97 percent, up from 84 percent in 2007.
“As Australians become increasingly less wired in the ways they access the Internet, a greater focus …

With more Americans out of work, career development web sites have seen a surge in traffic, according to a new report from Nielsen Online.  In January 2009, there were 49.7 million unique visitors to these sites, up from 41.5 million unique visitors in January 2008, an increase of 20 percent.
CareerBuilder Network was the top destination with 20.8 million visitors, followed by Yahoo! HotJobs and Monster, with 11.7 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively.  Among age groups, the number of unique visitors to career development web sites age 65 and …

According to Nielsen Online, there were approximately 9.5 billion Web searches conducted during January 2009, up an impressive 27.5 percent from January 2008.
Google searches accounted for 62.8 percent of all Web searches with more than 5.9 billion queries.  Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.com continued to round out the top five.
Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

Rank
Provider
Searches (000)
YOY Growth
Share of Searches

 
All Searches
9,461,583
27.5%
100.0%

1
Google Seach
5,945,064
40.8%
62.8%

2
Yahoo! Search
1,528,779
8.7%
16.2%

3
MSN/Windows Live Search
1,057,677
18.3%
11.2%

4
AOL Search
381,769
8.9%
4.0%

5
Ask.com Search
181,205
1.0%
1.9%

6
My Web Search
66,649
-6.9%
0.7%

7
Comcast Search
50,311
25.8%
0.5%

8
Yellow Pages Search
25,392
NA*
0.3%

9
AT&T Worldnet Search
24,061
-2.0%
0.3%

10
NextTag Search
23,145
30.0%
0.2%

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

* A year-over-year comparison is not possible because …