UKOM/Nielsen data shows 35 of the web’s top 50 brands are accounted for by social media and ‘traditional’ businesses, up from 19 in 2004

Aleksandr Orlov, the meerkat star of the Compare The Market ads, has held off stiff competition from Lewis Hamilton, Mr. T, Dannii Minogue and Lionel Messi to make the ad featuring his great-grandfather’s victory over a mongoose army the U.K.’s most-liked TV ad of the year.

E-commerce in the U.K. is booming. More than eight out of 10 of the active online population – 31.6 million people – visited at least one of the U.K.’s top 200 e-commerce sites in August 2010, according to Nielsen’s latest E-commerce Landscape Report.

A steep increase in the number of people fearing for their jobs is driving consumer confidence downward in Great Britain according to the latest Consumer Confidence Survey, released by Nielsen and the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

As the curtain fell on the World Cup and team and player performances were analyzed across the world, The Nielsen Company looked at how the official FIFA website performed across a number of countries that participated in the tournament.

In 2007 being ‘green’ went mainstream with rise in the number of people wanting to shop in a sustainable way. Then the global recession hit and holding down jobs and paying the bills became a consumer priority over “ethical consumerism.” How will shoppers react when the economy rebounds?

The size of the U.K. Internet audience grew from 36.9 million people in May 2009 to 38.8 million people in May 2010. Of these 1.9 million new Internet users, 1.0 million (53 percent) were at least 50 years old.

In April 2007, Social Networks & Blogs accounted for less than nine percent of all UK Internet time, but in three years the sector has grown to account for almost 23 percent of U.K. Internet time.

Britain’s most popular grocery brands saw another successful year despite significant economic challenges, according to the annual Britain’s 100 Biggest Brands report.

On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year.