According to The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index, which measures media exposure on TV and online, the Cowboys were still the most popular NFL team in America last season. Jerry Jones’s franchise earned the top indexed score of 100, far surpassing the runner-up Pittsburgh Steelers who finished with an index of 81.

The Cowboys’ top ranking was boosted by first-place showings in two of the four categories tallied by Nielsen: gross audience during nationally televised games and monthly unique audience to the team web site. The other two categories – local team ratings and total buzz volume – were captured by the Saints and New York Giants, respectively.

Dallas has held the top two spots in each of the last two years. The Steelers moved up from third to second, swapping places with the Giants. The Minnesota Vikings, aided no doubt by the presence and performance of legendary QB Brett Favre,  climbed from 13th place in 2008 to a tie for 4th in the 2009 regular season ranking. The Washington Redskins, meanwhile, dropped from 5th in 2008 to 11th in 2009.

NFC teams dominated the 2009 rankings. Seven of the top 10 teams  represented the conference, while the Steelers, Colts (t-8th) and Patriots (10th) were the only three AFC teams to crack the top third of the list.

Among the two New York teams, the Giants had the most media exposure, ranking 15 spots ahead of the Jets. And even despite drawing 38% lower local market ratings than their Bay Area rivals, the Oakland Raiders were the most popular national brand out of Northern California, ranking two spots ahead of the San Francisco 49ers (25th vs. 27th).

The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index measured all 32 NFL teams in four categories during the 2009 regular season: local team ratings, gross national TV audience, online buzz volume, and monthly unique audiences to official team websites. Teams in each category were assigned a score, with the top rank worth 100 points and each subsequent ranking assigned a lower weighted score based its distance from the top. Final team rankings were calculated using the sum of scores across all four categories, and then indexed with the highest total equaling 100.

Nielsen’s NFL Media Exposure Index was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal.

“We have seen some very exciting growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space. The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing, or a how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online. “Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune. Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”

Top 10 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked by Total Minutes for April 2009 and Their Year-over-Year Percent Growth (U.S., Home and Work)

Myspace Visitors Love Videos–Make it No. 1 Social Networking Site when Ranked by Video Streams

While the popular consensus is that Facebook has become the top dog in the social networking space-April was the fourth month in a row that Facebook held the top spot in both unique visitors and total minutes-Myspace has been winning in one arena: online video. With 120.8 million video streams, Myspace.com was the No. 1 social networking destination when ranked by streams and total minutes spent viewing video. Myspace visitors spent 384 million minutes viewing video on the site, with an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer. In comparison, Facebook visitors spent only 113.5 million minutes viewing video in April, with an average of 11.2 minutes per video viewer.

So maybe the better questions to ask are whom does each site reach — not who is “winning”  — and what audiences are they drawing and how are they building for the future to maintain the loyalty of their visitors who to this point have shown little long-term loyalty to any specific platform.

In April 2009, visitors aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 49 were the highest indexing age groups on Facebook, being 27 percent and 23 percent more likely to visit the site than the average user, respectively. In contrast, the highest indexing demographics on Myspace.com was people aged 18 to 24 and 12 to 17.

Unique Audience Composition Index by Age Group for Facebook and Myspace.com in April 2009 (U.S., Home and Work)

AOL: It Has Staying Power

During the dot.com era the AOL brand was synonymous with the Web for many users and was known for its dial-up access. Now that most users have transitioned to broadband access, AOL has made a name for itself through its media network that includes sites like TMZ. In April 2009, AOL LLC had 86.8 million unique visitors, making it the No. 4 online parent company, reaching 52 percent of the active Internet universe. Among the top 10 parent companies, AOL was No. 1 when ranked by average time spent per person, with 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Globally, the AOL parent company ranked No. 6 in April, with 132.2 million unique visitors.

Top 10 Parent Companies Ranked by Unique Audience for April 2009 (U.S., Home and Work)

Source: Nielsen NetView

Top 10 Global* Parent Companies Ranked by Unique Audience for April 2009 (Home and Work)

*Global Data takes into account the following countries: U.S., U.K., Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and Japan
Source: Nielsen NetView

Web traffic to sites within the “Current Events and Global News” category was up 27% on Election Day, versus the previous Tuesday (Oct. 28), Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.

The candidates’ websites also drew healthy traffic on Election Day.  Obama’s site had 1.2 million unique visitors on Nov. 4, while McCain’s site had 479,000 unique visitors.

Page views and time-per-person at current events and news websites also increased 103% and 61%, respectively, on Tuesday, according to Nielsen.

Check out historical unique audience data from Election Day 2004.

View the full media alert.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age, Silicon Alley Insider, Mediaweek, Media Life magazine, and Direct News.

According to Nielsen Online, CNN’s website drew more than 3.3 million unique visitors surfing the Web from home on November 4, 2004.

Meanwhile, MSNBC’s and Yahoo! News’ websites attracted unique audiences of more than 2.7 million and 2.6 million at home, respectively.

Working Americans also flocked to CNN’s, MSNBC’s, and Yahoo! News’ websites for 2004 Election Day updates from the office, according to Nielsen Online.

The NY Times’ website drew just over 20 million unique visitors in September — a 37% increase over unique traffic to the site last September.

Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 44% year over year growth, reaching 43.2 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen.

Surging interest in the U.S. presidential campaign likely drove growth for several U.S. news sites in September. 

The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska cracked Nielsen’s top 30 newspaper websites ranking for the first time, following a 928% jump in unique visitors over last September.  Sudden demand for news on Republican Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in September may have driven that dramatic increase. 

Two politics-centric sites, Politico.com (+219%) and TheHuffingtonPost.com (+457%), also saw notably large year over year percentage growth in September.

Meanwhile, Boston.com’s 122% above average growth can perhaps be attributed to Autumn baseball fever in the Hub.

Overall, all but three of the top 30 online news outlets, and all but one of the top 30 newspaper websites, attracted larger online audiences in September 2008 than they did the prior September.

View the top 30 newspaper websites for September in Editor & Publisher.

View the top 30 online news outlets for September in Editor & Publisher.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail.

The top two U.S.-based Olympics online destinations, Yahoo Olympics and NBC Olympics, drew an average of 4.7 million and 4.3 million unique visitors each day between August 8 and August 18.

According to Nielsen, Olympics-related websites in the U.S. are drawing slightly larger audiences on work days than weekends. 

Nielsen also reported that daily traffic to NBC’s Olympics site typically peaked at noon during the first work week of the Games (August 11 – 15), as U.S. fans logged on during their lunch hours to check for news and updates.

View the full press release.

Read the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Nielsen’s findings.