Will website traffic predict the 2012 US presidential race?
It's an election year in the United States and by all accounts, it will be an interesting one.
President Barack Obama, doesn't yet know who his opponent will be, but when it came to website traffic in January, the Democratic incumbent handily beat all of the Republican contenders.
Nielsen finds 33% of US mobile users deem location-based ads useful
A third of mobile users in the US find adverts that offer custom information based on their location useful, according to a new report from Nielsen.
The study also found that 26% are more likely to look at ads if they have an ‘interesting’ video included and 20% enjoy ads with interactive features.
Nielsen’s US Digital Consumer Report for Q3-Q4 2011 examines how the digital landscape is evolving by tracking various categories such as smartphone usage, connected TV and social networking.
Music sales milestone: digital surpasses physical
It's been more than a decade since Napster sent the music industry into a
tailspin, and record labels are still adapting to the digital reality they find themselves in.
For better or worse, the future of music is not the CD, and a huge recent milestone confirms what we have known for a long time: that it's largely digital.
US teens send almost 3,500 texts per month
It's no surprise that teenagers are some of the most active users of mobile.
Their texting prolificacy is well-established, and for many, sending an email or making a telephone call is a rare event.
But according to a new study released by Nielsen, teens in the United States are also rapidly increasing their mobile data usage.
Nielsen reveals that streaming accounts for 14% of time spent on Xbox 360
If Microsoft needed any more support for its decision to reposition the Xbox 360 console as an all-in-on entertainment hub, Nielsen’s latest statistics provide just that.
The research company has revealed a sneak preview of its third annual 360° Gaming Report for the US market, which shows that streaming represents a reported 14% of time spent on the Xbox 360.
Unique viewers of video up by 26%
According to a study by Nielsen, the amount of time spent streaming videos online in the US has more than doubled since 2008, with unique viewers increasing by 26%.
The report puts this down to a higher quantity of video content available, particularly long-form content like films and TV shows.
Nielsen looks at social media and television
Television and social media are a match made in Hollywood. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are virtual watercoolers, and when something happens on television, you'll increasingly find that the conversation is taking place online.
This, for obvious reasons, creates numerous opportunities for the creators and distributors of television programming, and many television networks, producers and personalities are actively tapping into social media.
Nielsen flub highlights the perils of panels
When media buyers purchase inventory from television networks, they typically rely heavily on Gross Rating Point (GRP) metrics which are designed to reflect reach.
And for good reason: if you're buying media to get in front of consumers, you need to know how many consumers you can reach through various media channels and properties.
One company, Nielsen, dominates the television market, and its GRPs heavily influence how billions upon billions of dollars are spent each year.
Needless to say, the stakes are high and any mistakes could have a notable impact.
Tablets are from Mars, e-readers are from Venus
Whether you're male or female, there's an almost equal chance that you own a smartphone. But what about tablets and e-readers? Do men and women share different preferences when it comes to the latest and greatest mobile devices?
According to Nielsen's latest survey of mobile device owners, the answer is increasingly 'yes.' In Q2 2011, it found that 61% of e-readers were owned by women, up from 46% in the third quarter of 2010. Tablets? Almost the opposite: 57% of them are owned by men.
Tablets aren't killers: report
Thanks to Apple, we know that there's a market for tablet computing devices. But what we still don't know is how the growth of tablet devices will impact the usage of other computing devices.
Some, not surprisingly, believe that the tablet is a killer. A popular meme on this front: the iPad is killing netbooks. But is that really the case?
