Other highlights of the World Cup’s popularity include:

• In the U.S., 112 million people, or 37% of the viewing public, watched part of the games. This is 27% higher than 2006.
• In addition, about 64 million people – or about a third of all U.S. Internet users – visited a World Cup-related website such as ESPN.com, Univision.com, FIFA.com, or Yahoo! Sports.
• In the blogosphere during the three months May-July 2010, 6.2 million people were exposed to World Cup buzz on blogs and chat rooms, and they saw 15.1 million buzz impressions.

The World Cup presents tremendous opportunities for reaching a large number of consumers, but perhaps even more important, a large number of very engaged consumers. The intensity of consumers’ involvement in the World Cup is extremely high and as Nielsen has shown in the past, a viewer’s engagement with a program is a good indicator of how engaged he or she will be with a commercial message.

Nielsen’s ad effectiveness business looked to see whether there was any link between being an official World Cup sponsor and viewers’ engagement with those ads. In fact, Nielsen found that Official sponsors had a higher net “Likeability” on average compared to commercials from other, non-sponsor World Cup advertisers. The insights from Nielsen’s ad effectiveness research were borne out by our research into online conversations. Most of the official World Cup sponsors became the most buzzed-about brands online.

The World Cup was a great laboratory to test out new ways of gaining insight into how consumers interact with the World Cup. One of the many innovative projects Nielsen undertook for the World Cup was our Life360 digital ethnography initiative, which gave us an intimate, revealing true-to-life view of how people used media during the games.

In our Life360 projects, we ask a specially recruited panel of consumers to record their engagement with media, purchase behavior, or other activities for a limited period of time. In South Africa, for example, we recruited a panel of 420 respondents, equipped them with mobile devices and asked them five times a day to answer surveys that measured their interaction with media, brand awareness and select expenditures — along with their mood and a photo. Surveys were collected at homes, work, fan parks, stadiums and other venues, yielding a trove of data and 54,000 images.

In the U.S., our Life360 work involved equipping 100 respondents with video cameras and asked them to record their engagement with the tournament across platforms (for ESPN & Univision). Nielsen Life360’s research demonstrated the intensity with which viewers interacted with the games. It also showed that viewing among Hispanics was an all-family affair, with women tuning into games in high numbers and creating fútbol parties – with special dishes, team colors and cheerleading of their favorite teams.

Hybrid Ads include customized ads, branded promos, vignettes, interstitials, and micro-series where sponsor messaging is combined with program or entertainment content.

Recall refers to the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, a hybrid ad’s sponsor.

A hybrid ad’s “recall score” is the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, the sponsor of a hybrid ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing primetime TV on broadcast and major cable networks.

Recall scores are indexed against the mean score for all new hybrid ads during the time period to calculate an ad’s “recall index.”

A recall index of 100 indicates average recall.  A recall index of 279, for example, means that a hybrid ad has proven to be about 2.8 times as memorable as the average new hybrid ad during the four-week time period.

Hybrid Ads include customized ads, branded promos, vignettes, interstitials, and micro-series where sponsor messaging is combined with program or entertainment content.

Recall refers to the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, a hybrid ad’s sponsor.

A hybrid ad’s “recall score” is the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, the sponsor of a hybrid ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing primetime TV on broadcast and major cable networks.

Recall scores are indexed against the mean score for all new hybrid ads during the time period to calculate an ad’s “recall index.”

A recall index of 100 indicates average recall.  A recall index of 291, for example, means that a hybrid ad has proven to be nearly three times as memorable as the average new hybrid ad during the four-week time period.

Recall refers to the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, the brand/product featured in an in-program placement.

A placement’s “recall score” is the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, the brand/product they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing dramas and sitcoms on U.S. broadcast networks.

Recall scores are indexed against the mean score for all new product placements occurring in the scripted drama and sitcom genres during the time period to calculate a placement’s “recall index.”

A recall index of 100 indicates average recall.  A recall index of 230, for example, means that the in-program placement has proven to be 2.3 times as memorable as the average placement during the four-week time period.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age’s “Madison + Vine” and Product Placement News.