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Tag: Nielsen

  • Kids Are Dreaming of an iChristmas

    If you’re wondering what to get your kid this holiday season and want to go the electronics route, you probably can’t go wrong with an Apple product.

    That’s the takeaway from a recent Nielsen study into the wishlists of children. They looked at kids “interest in buying in the next 6 months” (interest in their parents buying, more like it) and found that iEverything is on their minds.

    The top product was the iPad, with 48% expressing interest. That’s up 4% from last year. 36% of kids aged 6-12 expressed interest in the iPod Touch and the iPad mini and another 33% are interested in an iPhone. In fact, Apple products hold 4 out of the top 5 positions in the study – the lone non-Apple product being the Nintendo Wii U with 39% saying that want one in the next 6 months.

    Kids want ipads in 2012

    When Nielsen looked at older kids (aged 13+), Apple products were still popular – but there was a larger variety in their desires. The iPad still topped that list, with 21% expressing interest. The next three spots were held by any computer, a tablet other than the iPad, and the Wii U. Apple’s iPhone came in fifth with 14% expressing interest.

    This marks the second straight year that Nielsen has found an affinity for iProducts among kids. Last year, for kids aged 6-12, the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone topped the list.

    Apple recently launched a holiday gift guide page and announced that they will once again be holding an online/in-store Black Friday sale.

  • Nielsen Acquires Vizu Brand Metrics Measurement Platform

    Today, Nielsen, the ratings and research people, announced they have definitive plans to acquire, Vizu, an online advertising performance meter and optimizer.

    This acquisition is part of Nielsen’s recent commitment to cross-platform advertising measurement.

    Vizu’s unique solutions will be integrated into Nielsen’s growing product portfolio and offer clients real-time feedback on ad exposure and performance.

    Steve Hasker, President of Global Media Products and Advertising Solutions at Nielsen comments on the acquisition of Vizu:

    “We are committed to providing a complete understanding of a brand’s end-to-end advertising campaign impact,”

    “Vizu has developed a best-in-class solution for measuring and optimizing brand advertising effectiveness online, which offers a powerful complement to Nielsen’s cross-platform solutions for the advertising industry. We are pleased to welcome Vizu’s talented team to Nielsen and are excited to work together to further evolve our Brand Effect product suite, and provide unparalleled capabilities to advertisers, publishers and agencies.”

    Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu comments on the acquisition by Nielsen Ratings Group:

    “Through quality measurement, publishers and advertisers can harness the power of online advertising and understand its true value in connecting with consumers,”

    “Nielsen is committed to cross-platform measurement and advertising solutions that enable better understanding of the consumer and greater advertising efficiency. We’re confident that combining our advertising technology with Nielsen’s capabilities and expertise creates a stronger proposition for our clients and the industry.”

    Vizu’s capabilities will immediately be incorporated into Nielsen’s product offerings. No financial aspects of the acquisition have been disclosed nor was there a tentative closing date mentioned. It appears Vizu’s staff will now become part of Nielsen’s company and continue on as they had before the acquisition.

  • Nielsen Says Funny Trumps Sentimental Every Time

    Despite less than ideal economic conditions, consumers are spending money like crazy and if you hope to capture some of that revenue than you have to advertise.

    One question you might ask is, “How can I invest the least and get the most?”.

    Nielsen, the television ratings people, wondered the same thing.

    While asking how to invest the least and get the most was a little too broad a question, they set out to examine what type of ads seem to work the best regardless of economic conditions.

    To do this, they looked at ad performance before, during, and after the great recession. Essentially what they wanted to know was, “To what extent, if any, has the tumultuous economic climate and subsequent attitude shifts impacted consumer responsiveness to various creative tactics?“.

    They looked at over 4,000 U.S. ads that were categorized as either humor, narrative, sentimental, product, or promotional and value. The study took place between 2006 and 2011. Pre-recession was ’06 to 07, Recession was ’08 to ’09, and post was 2010 to 2011.

    The Key Findings:

    * Humorous ads have consistently resonated best with viewers, regardless of the economy or year

    * During the recession, there was a notable lift in effectiveness of sentimental and value-oriented ads

    * Ads focused on product features and promotion/price do not resonate with viewers . . . . even during tough economic times

    * The performance of narrative and sentimental ads has improved since 2006

    So, if you are looking for the most bang for your buck, go with humor, it wins every time. Promotion, which seems like it would speak to people most often, interestingly loses almost every time. Very interesting. I don’t always advertise, but when I do, I use humor.

  • Nielsen Says Younger Users Will Adopt 4G Networks

    This probably comes as no surprise, but consumers under the age of 34 in the United States are the most likely to adopt 4G technology.

    From the first quarter in 2011 to the first quarter in 2012, the popularity of 4G devices has grown from 1.4 percent to 7.6 percent.

    While people under the age of 34 account for most of the users already taking advantage of 4G, 63 percent of teens are expected to make the change in the coming year. Regardless of how you break it down, younger people are most likely to be adopting, or considering adopting, 4G technology.

    Take a look at Nielsen’s bar graph:


    Nielsen’s 4 major takeaways for the mobile industry:

    1). While both awareness and adoption of 4G have increased, understanding of 4G remains low as 55 percent of respondents are unable to identify any forms of 4G technology.

    2). Eighty-six percent of 4G smartphone owners are satisfied with their 4G devices, comparable to owners of 3G devices, although satisfaction is notably low for battery life among 4G owners (46%). A portion of 4G smartphone owners report manually toggling between 3G and 4G on their device in an effort to conserve battery life.

    3). Although 39 percent of 4G smartphone owners indicate that 4G was a factor influencing their purchasing decision, only 8 percent identify 4G as the most important factor. The research found that 4G capability is considerably more important for those purchasing a data card or mobile hotspot than either a smartphone or tablet.

    4). Current 4G users are five times more likely to consider 4G as a replacement for their home broadband connection.

  • Nielsen Says People Aren’t Watching TV Anymore

    Nielsen Says People Aren’t Watching TV Anymore

    It’s bad news for advertisers and television studios alike. Nielsen says many people just aren’t watching the old boob tube anymore. An interesting metric for Nielsen to record, the number of people who watch television at least once a month, declined seven percent last year.

    This data comes from over fifty countries. Conversely, the number of folks who viewed an online video increased to 84%. That means, at this current point in time, more people are watching online videos than preprogrammed television shows. It’s definitely a shift, especially considering that television has been viewed as a staple in evolved societies, much like running water and electricity.

    nielsen 2

    nielsen 1

    The data from Nielsen suggests that many people are choosing to watch video content online instead of channel surfing and searching for something to watch the old fashioned way. Of course, this means a decline in subscription for the local cable providers. Perhaps some folks have traded the expense of cable for faster internet connections and wi-fi capability.

    nielsen 3

    With such a rich variety of choices online, many consumers choose to spend their time doing things other than watching traditional television programming. Whether it’s watching streaming videos, social sharing, networking, or just plain surfing the web, people are choosing the internet over television. I think it’s a positive trend.

  • Nielsen Reveals Top Online US Brands & Travel Sites

    Nielsen Reveals Top Online US Brands & Travel Sites

    Nielsen is always slaving away to find out what’s hot and what the latest trends tell us about consumer behavior. This time they were looking at who the top online brands were in the United States.

    They also examined who the top travel brands were from online search. As with many studies on popular culture, the results are not really a surprise.

    Who came out on top? Of course, Google did, and in more ways than one. Obviously they won for search, but they were also the most clicked on travel brand with their Google Maps site. As you can imagine, they were followed by MapQuest in the travel category, with Yahoo Local and TripAdvisor trailing very far behind.

    As for the top US search brands it plays out as follows; Google, Facebook, Yahoo, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing, YouTube, Microsoft, AOL Media, Amazon, Wikipedia, then Apple. Again, nothing really comes as a surprise from that list.

    The study was conducted in April of this year where the United States had 210 million active internet users. On average, people spent 29 hours online browsing during April. So that’s the latest word from Nielsen; we like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

  • Nielsen and Google AdWords Study Younger TV Viewers

    Google and Nielsen have partnered up to do some research into people’s television watching habits. What they found was that there’s a significant portion of the population who doesn’t spend that much time watching TV. About 31% of people age 18 to 49 spend only an average of 39 minutes per day watching TV. This is significantly less time than the general population and that really doesn’t give advertisers too much of an opportunity to market to those folks.

    Across a series of six cross-media studies, the duo found that a combination of both television and online advertising efforts are the best way to reach consumers in the light viewer category. Television alone failed to reach 63% of people from this group. Combing the online component allowed them to achieve a 27% increase in brand impression rate. I’ve summarized the results here, but it really much more involved.

    Take a look at the video from Google’s AdWords Blog:

    Here are the highlights Google listed from the study adding YouTube to your ad campaign:

    * Reach a valuable, complementary, younger audience

    * Add much-needed frequency to light TV viewers

    * Deliver media more evenly across light and heavy TV viewers, reducing waste

    * Do all of this both efficiently and affordably

    So if you’re thinking about adding an online component to your television marketing campaign, take a look at these studies further. There’s more to it than just adding a YouTube video or paying for some space on Google. The overarching message is that with just television alone, you are missing a valuable portion of the consumer market. Follow the links above to learn more about what Nielsen and Google discovered about online advertising.

  • How We’re Using Our Mobile Devices [Nielsen Study]

    With over half of America already using smartphones and about 20% owning tablet computers, it’s interesting to take a look at how we are using these devices, and also how they are changing our lives.

    This is what Nielsen set out to do with their latest study, and guess what what they found out? Well, like any good research effort, once the results are in, it seems like common sense. We like to shop. No really, that’s what they found out. Like I reported earlier this year, smartphones are the new window shopping.

    Mobile devices and the internet in general bring a lot more power to the shopping experience. Nielsen reports that nearly 80% of smartphone and tablet users are taking advantage of those devices for shopping-related activities. They are doing things like reading reviews, checking pricing, looking for stores, writing product testimonials, searching for coupons, and creating lists.

    Remember the old fashioned times when you had to buy an issue of Consumer Reports and hope they reviewed the stuff you were thinking about buying? Now you jump on YouTube, look for a product demo, or go on a retailers website and read a bunch of consumer reviews. You can check the top ten distributors on pricing in probably five minutes. Window shopping has never been so much damn fun.

    Save on the leg work and save on gasoline, and to top it all off, get the best prices, free shipping, and the peace of mind that only peer reviews can provide. Of course Nielsen, we are using our mobile devices for shopping. We love it!

    Take a look at what they found:

  • AOL Patterns Online Marketing Strategies After Those Used for TV

    AOL will be partnering with Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings to reach their target audience more efficiently. AOL announced today that it will offer marketers guaranteed audience delivery for online video advertising by implementing Nielsen’s frequency and gross rating point (GRP) measurement to determine how well it delivered ads to the desired target.

    GRP is a fundamental navigational metric. It is a coarse measurement of how a corporate entity approached its target audience and how its budget was spent.

    According to Marketing Metrics Made Simple, GRP as a stand alone measurement:

    “Provide no analysis – for example, it provides no evaluation of an outlet’s credibility with the audience. It is important not to make this metric do more than it is meant to do.It doesn’t even mean that everyone you counted even saw your message. For example, many television viewers whose receivers were tuned to “your” program may have been in the kitchen or bathroom when your commercial was on the screen. And many people may have driven by your United Way banner without looking at it.”

    Ran Harnevo, Senior Vice President, AOL Video is very excited about the shift, “AOL has a significant volume of high-quality content valued by advertisers and we are excited to take the lead on showing marketers the value and differentiated results we can guarantee.”

    But are the guarantees that AOL is claiming to provide marketers going to assist clients in reaching their goals?

  • Obama Trounces GOP Candidates In Site Visitors

    Everyone’s talking about how this election is the first true “social media” election, and it’s true that 2012 will probably see the most attempts at these types of connections from candidates to voters than ever before (way more the 2008). Although a candidates Facebook and Twitter presence are now a crucial part of their campaign, we can’t forget that a candidates plain old website is still the main place that people go for a variety of reasons.

    Maybe it’s to find out a candidate’s position on a certain issue or to read their whole platform. Maybe it’s to sign up to volunteer or to make a donation, For whatever the reason, candidates’ main sites are the portal to their campaigns.

    On that note, Nielsen just released a study about the candidates’ sites. They profiled visits in January from folks of voting age and looked at not only the volume of traffic to the sites, but also the demographics of those visitors.

    And it should come as no surprise that the sitting President garnered the most visitors to his site. But the margin was pretty wide. In fact, in the month of January, BarackObama.com received 1.2 million more unique visitors than RonPaul2012.com, RickSantorum.com, Newt.org, and MittRomney.com. Combined.

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    Nielsen looked at some demographics of the unique visitors as well. Here’s what they found:

    Female Visitors: Rick Santorum
    Women made up over 60 percent of the audience to RickSantorum.com, the largest male/female split among the candidates.

    Male Visitors: Ron Paul
    Only Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich’s sites drew more men than women (56% and 51%, respectively), but RonPaul2012.com wins this demo by 4.3 percentage points.

    Visitors aged 18-34: Ron Paul
    Ron Paul, the oldest of the 2012 presidential candidates, has the youngest visitors—over a third are 18-34.

    Visitors over age 50: Barack Obama
    More than half (52%) of President Obama’s visitors are over the age of 50, and those aged 50-64 are the most concentrated on his site.

    Affluent Visitors: Newt Gingrich
    Newt Gingrich’s audience is the most affluent and educated, as 27 percent make over $100K and half have a Bachelor’s or Post-Grad degree.

    Hispanic Visitors: Mitt Romney
    Hispanics made up 17 percent of the audience to MittRomney.com, 37 percent more Hispanics than were active online during January 2012 (12%).

    Visits to a candidate’s website don’t correlate to votes, as there are a number of reasons (both positive and negative) that any given person would go there. And there’s not much sense in pointing out the fact that Ron Paul’s site saw the most unique visitors in January, as that was two months ago, and a lot has changed in the race since then. But there are some interesting finds concerning the demographics, some that the candidates should definitely take notice of – particularly, how many women are flocking to Rick Santorum’s site and how many Hispanic voters are going to Romney’s.

  • Women Rule The Blogosphere As Both Bloggers & Visitors

    Women Rule The Blogosphere As Both Bloggers & Visitors

    Of all days, today being International Women’s Day, a timely study was released today by NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, revealing that women make up the majority of bloggers.

    NM Incite tracked over millions blogs from around the world to compile the data for their study. Blogs have boomed as an industry in recent years, escalating from 36 million in 2006 to 181 million at the time of the study. If the trajectory of growth is any indication, the saturation point for blogs doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight because the study speculates that consumer interest is still on the rise.

    While women are the majority in the bloggersphere, the study also found that 1 in 3 bloggers are mothers and that 52% of bloggers are parents with children under the age of 18 living in their household. Beyond just being curators and authors of blogs, though, women also make up the majority when it comes to social network and blog visitors.

    Additionally, nearly all of the bloggers these days are well-educated as 7 of 10 have gone to college, most of whom are graduates. So not only are more blogs being managed by women, but by highly intelligent women to boot.

    While much has been made of Pinterest‘s women-centric demographic, the NM Incite study found that the “visually-oriented social media site” is growing like gangbusters, with over 10 million unique U.S. visitors this past December alone – that’s nearly twice as many visitors as the site had two months earlier in October.

    So hats off to the ladies out there in the internets. Apparently, it’s your blogosphere – the rest of us just live in it.

  • Americans are More Likely to Use Tablets for Making Purchases

    New research from Nielsen has found that smartphone and tablet owners from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany are more apt to make online purchases on their PCs after viewing ads on their mobile devices than Americans. Italians were the most likely to click on an ad showcased on their devices to research a product further while Americans were found the least likely to follow this purchasing behavior.

    Among U.S. mobile device users tablet users are “more likely to click on a mobile ad or search for more information after viewing a mobile ad than U.S. smartphone owners.”

    As you can see on the tables above, American consumers were twice as likely to search for businesses and almost three times as likely purchase goods or services found on a tablet than those displayed on their smartphones.

  • DVR Usage Increasing Among Television Viewers

    As television and devices that take advantage of our screen time continue to evolve, so does our utter obsession with using TV grow.

    Nielsen posted on its blog a study the group recently conducted that looked at what Americans have been using their TVs for in the past six years.

    To preface the study, Nielsen shows how TV usage has changed over the past 50 years. In 1960, only seven percent of all households received cable. In 1990, 56 percent received cable and 66 percent owned a VCR. In 2006, 89 percent of TV was viewed live and DVR usage only accounted for 1.6 percent of our TV time.

    Things have changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Today, 98 percent of American homes own a TV and have some kind of device (i.e. DVR, game console, DVD player) attached to the television. The amount of live television content being viewed has dropped to 85 percent while DVR usage accounts for eight percent of our TV time now.

    Nielsen says that of three major devices that we connect to our TVs, the DVR gets the most use. While the amount of live TV content being watched may have dropped, it doesn’t mean people are watching less television. In fact, the time a person spent watching TV content increased 19 minutes year-over-year in the first four weeks of 2011.

    If the DVR is so important to our watching habits, who is driving it? It would appear that females aged 18 to 54 use the DVR the most by devoting 10 percent of their viewing time to the DVR.

    It would seem that the lowly DVD player is on its way out as less and less people use them. What has seen an increase is the game console with 3.9 percent of TV time being devoted to them. The increase in game console usage is being driven by teens who devote 11 percent of their TV time to using a game console.

    It’s important to remember, however, that game consoles simply replaced the DVD player. With services like Netflix and Hulu as well as its ability to play DVDs natively, it only makes sense for dedicated DVD player usage to drop.

    For those wanting to get into the nitty gritty of demographics, Nielsen has you covered. Asian Americans spent the least amount of time watching television in 2011. They did, however, see the biggest increase in viewing from 2010. In contrast, African-Americans and Hispanics spent less time watching TV in 2011 compared to the previous year.

    Asian-Americans spent the least amount of time watching live television, but made up for it by devoting the most time to DVR and DVD use. Hispanic homes were found to use gaming systems the most while African-American homes used DVD players the most.

    Here’s an image that breaks down TV usage among age groups:

    DVR Usage Television Viewers

    I think I’m mostly surprised by the fact that people in my age group were still using VCRs in 2011. I keep around an old Betamax player for kicks, but I never actually use it.

    While traditional TV is still clearly dominating American viewing habits, it’s clear that it’s beginning to lose its lead. The rise of the DVR and game consoles with streaming technology are cutting into its market.

    All of this could explain why cable companies want to encrypt their signals. They don’t want to lose any more business to these services or new services like Boxee.

  • Nielsen: Smartphones Are For The Young, Wealthy

    Nielsen: Smartphones Are For The Young, Wealthy

    Smartphones are rapidly replacing feature phones in the pockets of Americans, and Google+Reader”>Nielsen’s new smartphone penetration survey reveals a few ket insights. You’re more likely to own a smartphone if you’re young or if you’re wealthy (especially both) and people that have bought mobile phones in the past few months are overwhelmingly choosing smartphones.

    Smartphone ownership is about youth and income. Apparently, you have to have at least one of those things working in your favor in order to be compelled to purchase a smartphone.

    Smartphone penetration is highest in people aged 25-34 making $100K+ a year. And across the board, with all age groups, money had a direct impact on whether or not the survey participants had a smartphone. The youngest subset of the survey (18-34) were more likely to have a smartphone even if they pulled in less than $15K a year – but once you got to the older groups, money became a requirement.

    Check out Nielsen’s graph below:

    Nielsen also reports that people who have recently made a mobile phone purchase are overwhelmingly choosing to buy a smartphone instead of a feature phone. Over all ago groups, 69% of those who bought a phone in the last 3 months bought a smartphone. It’s even more likely when you talk about folks aged 18-34. 8 out of 10 of them chose a smartphone over a feature phone.

    As you can see above, Nielsen says that among all mobile phone users, 48% have a smartphone. This is up almost 10% from a few months ago, where they reported that 40% of mobile users had smartphones.

  • Nielsen: 70% Of Kids In Tablet-Owning Households Use Them

    Nielsen: 70% Of Kids In Tablet-Owning Households Use Them

    Kids these days: they get everything they want. I mean, smartphones before they hit puberty is not unheard of and just look at the gaming systems they get to enjoy – Xbox 360s and PS3s. My childhood was Super Mario 3 and Oregon Trail. Well, on second thought, my childhood was pretty awesome.

    And now, Nielsen is reporting that 7 out of 10 kids in households with tablets use them on a regular basis (Nielsen defines “kids” as those aged 12 or younger). This is a 9% increase from stats reported a year ago.

    The majority of these children use tablets the play games, but a high percentage (57%) also use them for educational purposes. 43% of the kids use tablets to watch TV shows and movies, while 41% of parents distract their children with tablets at restaurants and other events.

    When you think about it, there’s really no computing unit more suited for kids than a tablet. It’s a giant touch screen, for one. That, coupled with the fact that tablets are app based, makes it a very intuitive experience – much more so than a computer running Mac OS or Windows.

    Tablets in education seem to be where the future is taking us. Many school districts have begun initiatives to provide students with iPads for the classroom. A school system in Sweden recently proposed to take it a step further by replacing all textbooks with iPads – meaning that the tablet wouldn’t simply be a supplementary educational device. Educational apps have also been linked to improved test scores.

    Of course, using tablets for educational purposes is great and all, but let’s not forget the most compelling reason to put an iPad in a youngster’s hands:

    Do you have a child that regularly uses a tablet? Do you think that tablets will play a huge part in education going forward? Let us know in the comments.

  • Oprah’s Self-Promoting Tweet Draws Ire Of Nielsen, Fans

    Oprah surely wants her brand new show “Oprah’s Next Chapter” (airing on her OWN network) to become a big hit like her previous TV offering, but her methods of promotion have landed the global icon in hot water.

    Grammy night just happened to be the night that Oprah’s new show premiered. How does a media princess get people to flip the channel? By tweeting to her 9.2 million+ followers, of course. So on Sunday night, Oprah tweeted this:

    Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Nielsen box

    and later…

    Commercial Grammy people..u can turn to OWN

    Apparently, that’s a big no-no, and her actions drew the ire of the Nielsen company whose job it is to provide accurate, unbiased TV ratings information. Nielsen’s policy strictly forbids networks from reaching out to Nielsen participants – for obvious reasons. This could create inaccurate testing results. The company released this statement about Oprah’s tweet:

    In accordance with our policies and procedures, Nielsen is reviewing this incident with our clients and we may withhold, breakout and/or make a note in the ratings. We take any violation of our policy seriously and will work with clients to resolve the situation.

    Oprah later removed the tweet and apologized:

    I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen. I intended no harm and apologize for the reference.

    It wasn’t just Nielsen who chastised Oprah for her tweet. Her followers got on her case as well, calling her “desperate” and “unethical.” Although Oprah has deleted the original tweet, her responses to people’s criticism are still there:

    @Oprah
    Oprah Winfrey    @123arnie @valsocal unethical a little harsh don’t u think? Seemed like it made sense to me. Sorry if u’re offended. 2 days ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @Oprah
    Oprah Winfrey    @growingupgranby the word “please” is used as courtesy not a beg. 2 days ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @Oprah
    Oprah Winfrey    @Britta16 @steveokdwb “desperate” not ever a part of my vocab. 2 days ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Nielsen Report: American Viewing Behavior

    The latest Nielsen cross-platform report shows that Americans are watching more than 33 hours of video per week. Over 90% of viewers are subscribing to pay services for their television content but even more interesting is that over 75% are also paying for broadband service. In fact, pay television services and internet broadband subscriptions have risen over 5% in the last year.

    Actually this makes a lot of sense. As consumers choose to spend more time at home to save money, they need to be entertained. Over five million homes have broadband only connections meaning they aren’t paying for television programming. this is an increase of almost 23% since 2010. I think this also makes a lot of sense. Save some money, most content is available online somewhere. Sometimes you just have to wait a week or two to see your favorite show.

    So that’s what Nielsen had to report. The internet just seems to get more popular every year and consumers continue to spend more on home entertainment like satellite, broadband, and wi-fi despite less than ideal economic conditions. It’s no surprise. As fuel gets more expensive, why not pay to bring the entertainment to you.

  • Microsoft, Apple Are Most Visited Computer/Electronic Sites

    Just as how you go to the grocery store when you want to find food, a new Nielsen report shows that when the people want to find some information about electronics and computers, it comes as no surprise that they turn to websites of companies that specialize in electronics and computers.

    Microsoft’s website welcomed 93.8 million unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2011, more than any other computer and consumer electronics brand online during the month. Visitors spent an average of 42 minutes perusing the site. In comparison, Apple saw 68.7 million unique visitors but their they were more likely to spend more time on their site as the average visitor remained on their website for 62 minutes per visitor. “Adobe, Mozilla, and CNET rounded out the top five brands, with 24 to 28 million visitors going to their sites and spending 2 to 6 minutes each on average. CNET was the only news website among the top 5 in this category overall.”

    Amazon had the third-highest amount of unique visitor traffic with 72 million unique visitors, each spending an average of 29 minutes on the site. Amazon was leaps and bounds the most visited mass merchandiser website, easily dwarfing the traffic for and time spent on rival sites like Walmart, Target, and Overstock.com. Consumer traffic at Walmart “followed as the second-ranked site, where 34.5 million visitors spent an average of 13 minutes per person on the site. Target, Shopathome.com, and Overstock.com rounded out the top five most visited mass merchandiser websites.”

    One stand-out factoid about Amazon: 1 in 3 people in the United States visited the site in September 2011.

    Demographically speaking, women were more likely to both categories of websites. 3 out of 4 Internet savvy women visited consumer electronics sites during September 2011, compared to 7 out of 10 men. “Women were also 7 percent more likely to visit mass merchandiser sites. Young people aged 18-34 were slightly more likely than the general population (4 percent more likely) to visit consumer electronics sites.” Additionally, those in the middle income bracket were also more likely to visit computer and consumer electronics websites (guess that makes sense that they’d visit it more than low income consumers, and those 1%ers probably just hire people to do their comparative shopping for them).

    Nielsen suggests that interested readers take a look at their State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report for additional insights about these consumer habits.

  • Hi-Def, Smartphones, et al Rule Our Lives!

    Lorraine Baines: Our first television set. Dad just picked it up today. Do you have a television?
    Marty McFly: Well, yeah! You know we have… two of them.
    Milton Baines: Wow! You must be rich!
    Stella Baines: Oh, honey, he’s teasing you. Nobody has two television sets.

    According to a new report released by the Nielsen people (who peek in your windows to see what you watch on TV), almost one in three U.S. households that have a television actually owns – wait for it – FOUR or more!

    I am guessing that one is an HDTV hanging in the living room that they are still making payments on. Another is in the parents’ bedroom. One hooked to an older XBox in the kids’ room. Another is a monster CRT in the garage that still works but is hooked to nothing because Dad hasn’t yet bought that converter box and rabbit ears but doesn’t want to trash it and God knows no one will buy that dinosaur on Craigslist. /digression

    290 million Americans owns at least one television. There are only 307 million people in the U.S., including babies and hobos. We are entertainment and information junkies.

    And we don’t stop with TVs. We love smartphones, tablets, anything we can get our hands on.

    211 million Americans are online (at home) and 116 million of us carry that web-access around with us mobile. And what do we do with all that access? I’m glad you asked.

    In terms of smart phone use, it breaks down like this…

    And, as far as the apps we use on our phones, here’s the skinny…

    So, we got TV and we got Internet. And, we got them at the same time! Ain’t that just like a guy?

    Nope, that’s just like a woman…

    Don’t shoot the messenger. You know you do it.

  • Lots More People Still Use Myspace Than Google+

    In what is probably a surprise to nobody who uses the Internet with any kind of regularity, Google was the most visited U.S. web brand in 2011. As reported by Nielsen earlier today, the search engine juggernaut maintained an average of 153.4 million unique visitors per month in 2011 while Facebook, the second top-ranked web brand, attracted 137.6 million unique visitors each month.

    If it’s any consolation to Facebook, they obliterated all other social networks and blogs this year. Blogger, Google’s blogging service, was a distant second to Facebook’s top-ranked social networking site with 45.7 unique visitors per month. Twitter trailed even further behind the two online services with 23.5 million unique visitors followed by another blogging service, WordPress.com, at 20.3 million unique visitors. One telling detail of this data about social networks is that Myspace.com – Myspace! – was the fifth top ranked social network/blog in 2011 with 17.9 million visitors – over twice as many unique visitors as Google+. Really, Google+, you couldn’t even keep up with Myspace? While Google may be the top web brand in the country this year, they’ve still got some distance to cover in the social networking arena.

    Also, there’s this report from CNET earlier today that says that Google+ surpassed 62 million users. Something isn’t adding up. Granted, the CNET report says that a quarter of all Google+ users joined in December and the Nielsen data doesn’t include December, but that’s still a huge discrepancy in these numbers. Maybe Google’s fudging their numbers by synchronizing Google+ with Gmail accounts so that they can include Gmail users as Google+ stats. I mean, I technically am a Google+ user because I use Gmail but that doesn’t mean I actually use Google+ for anything. I don’t see how else these numbers can be so starkly different.

    Google shouldn’t hold its gigantic G-shaped head too low, though, because they also dominated among online video providers this year. YouTube, Google’s video service, attracted 111.1 million unique visitors this past year. The closest any other video service came to that number was VEVO, who attracted 34.5 million viewers. One notable stat in this data set is that Netflix took the Elevator of Winning all the way down to the Basement of Losing because they eked into the last spot on this list with 7.4 million. They’re probably lucky they even showed up on this list after spending their totally fubar summer trying their very best not to admit to everyone, “Hey, look okay, we have no idea what we’re doing!” Given that the DVD and streaming service is now split and nobody really wants to pay twice as much for both services now, I bet Netflix doesn’t even show up on this list next year.

    It’s probably a moot question to ask at this point, but is anyone even surprised by these rankings? When was the last time anyone even logged into a Myspace account? Watch this space this time next year to find out what 2012 does to shake up the hierarchy of online media titans.

  • Nielsen And comScore Settle Patent Dispute

    In March, Nielsen sued comScore, accusing the firm of infringing upon 5 patents related to measuring and displaying online content.

    Here’s a look at that complaint, courtesy of PaidContent:

    Nielsen v. ComScore [Complaint]

    Shortly thereafter, comScore countersued Nielsen and its Net Ratings division, claiming it was infringing upon its patents.

    That whole mess is apparently over now (at least for the next few years), as the two measurement firms have settled. Nielsen and comScore put out a joint press release, which says the following:

    Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN), a leading global provider of information and analytics around what consumers watch and buy, and comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the companies have settled their patent disputes.

    As part of this settlement both companies will enter into a cross-licensing agreement. Subject to retained rights by Nielsen, comScore will acquire ownership of the four Nielsen families of patents asserted in litigation, a portfolio with many U.S. and international patents. comScore also grants Nielsen worldwide licenses for the families of the four patents comScore asserted in litigation. Both parties agree not to bring any patent action against the other for the next three years. In addition, Nielsen has acquired approximately $19 million in comScore restricted common stock with neutral voting requirements, which Nielsen has agreed to hold for a period of one year minimum.
    “We are pleased with this resolution,” said Steve Hasker, President, Media Products and Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen. “This agreement is supportive of and complements the substantial investments Nielsen has made in its intellectual property over the years. It also creates an incentive for our companies to explore potential forms of collaboration to better serve our clients.”

    “We are pleased to put this matter behind us and to bolster our patent portfolio, enabling the application of this intellectual property to many areas involving the Web, such as ad visibility and Web engagement measurements,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, President & CEO, comScore. “We believe that the agreements we have reached signal a new phase of cooperation for our companies and enable us to better deliver the innovation and value the industry needs.”

    This agreement settles both patent suits filed by the parties in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.