Today, the company announced a pilot program for the Nielsen Digital Program Ratings which will track TV content viewed online. The pilot starts with a handful of big-name partners – A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision. The pilot is set to begin in May and run through July, but Nielsen is already announcing that the Digital Program Ratings will see a commercial launch. The pilot program is simply serving to “fine-tune” Nielsen’s methods before they hit primetime, or, later streamed on the internet time – whatever.

“The pilot for Nielsen Digital Program Ratings is a major milestone for the industry,” said Eric Solomon, SVP for Global Digital Audience Measurement at Nielsen. “As a companion product to Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will enable clients to better understand the online audience for their programming by harnessing the same methodology Nielsen already uses to measure the audience for related advertising.”

Nielsen says that they will start by measuring TV content viewed online, on computers. For instance, CBS will be able to see Nielsen’s numbers for how many streams their online content got on their official site. During the pilot, initial results will only be shared with clients, but Nielsen hopes to make the data public when the program sees a full launch later this year.

Of course, Nielsen plans to expand the program to “additional content types and devices” in the future. So we’re talking streams from sites like Hulu or YouTube, made on and iPad or Xbox.

Nielsen already has an presence in online metrics, including web content (YouTube videos and such). They also track websites based on visitors. This pilot program marks their first foray into tracking online streams of traditional TV content, however.

“The potential to measure video viewing of specific programs on linear TV as well as the Internet is significant,” said Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development, NBCUniversal. “It’s an important step toward reaching the ‘holy grail’ of true cross-platform measurement.”

It’s an interesting move from Nielsen, but the online viewership tracking won’t really come into its true form until Nielsen is measuring all types of online TV streaming across all types of devices. Although Nielsen is just announcing this pilot program, it’s clear that full inclusion is what they envision.

comScore and other online measurement companies are watching videos—I mean, online video audiences—grow and grow. Now Nielsen will use a new “Internet Meter” with its People Meter families to measure online as well as offline TV consumption.

The Internet Meter will measure the “extended screen”—online television from cable companies, such as OnDemand Online from Comcast and TV Everywhere from Time Warner. This type of viewing may have slipped past online measurement companies looking at web-based TV, like from Hulu. Nielsen has worked in online measurement as well, though they don’t say if they’ll be combining Hulu numbers with the online cable numbers.

According to Read Write Web, Hulu has tended to prefer comScore’s measures of its audience, since comScore’s numbers have shown a higher viewership than Nielsen’s. Online measurement is notoriously tricky in this area, since there aren’t set industry standards on how to count audiences, and as always, there can be sampling biases.

RWW says that the Internet Meter might combat inherent problems in sampling—but the Internet Meter will be based on the same statistical principles, which are fairly sound. (Yeah, I know, it doesn’t seem like a small number of people can accurately predict the habits of the general population, and a larger sample usually yields more accurate data, but if people are truly chosen at random, a small sample has a 90-95% chance of accurately reflecting the population, depending on how they do their calculations. </AP stats lesson>)

What do you think? Will this make a difference to online television? Will it affect ad prices online?

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Nielsen reports that two-thirds of the world’s Internet population belongs to a social network, though the by-country stats show a little more variation: only half of Switzerland’s and Germany’s residents are on social networks, while Brazil has 80% of its population social networking (Orkut FTW!). In Brazil, one in every four minutes online is spent on a social networking site. (In the UK, it’s one of every six minutes, in the US, it’s one of every sixteen.)

On the other hand, the smaller markets are seeing the biggest growth—Germany was the fastest growing country in social network membership last year.

Facebook is the big winner in this race, however. Worldwide, the most popular social network saw a 566% increase in time spent on site last year, coming to total 20.5 billion minutes on site. (!) They also premiered a German-language version in March 2008, which has somewhat with the increased popularity of social networking in that country (although FB still lags behind more established sites).

Nielsen also documents the demographic shift to older users on social networks worldwide. The full report (PDF) includes some good suggestions for advertisers and publishers, as well as data on country- and network-specific uses.

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Quick Facts 

• MySpace.com is #1 social networking site in the US, with nearly 57.4 million unique visitors last month.
• Google’s Blogger rests is #1 for blog site rankings with 33.6 million visitors and 49% more than last year with 33.6 visitors in November.
• #2 social networking site, Facebook is keeping double digit growth rates compared to last year. The number of visitors is nearly 22.0 million – 89 percent higher compared to MySpace visitors which rose just 7 percent year over year.
• WordPress, the #2 blogging platform grew 310 percent from last year with 12 million visitors, — up from 2.9 million last year. #3 is Type Pad, which grew — 22 percent from last year with 11.0 million visitors in Nov.

Here’s a chart that shows last month’s comparison of the top blog sites. Blogger is far ahead but WordPress and Thatsfit (a health-oriented blog) are growing very quickly. Judging from this social networking sites are topping out more than blogs. There is positive growth for all but Xanga.

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Take statistics from Hitwise, comScore, Compete, and Nielsen//NetRatings as an example. Their reports don’t always cover the same ground, but when they do, the results are often quite different. Just recently, they created a question of whether Microsoft had lost or gained market share in a certain month.

So, again, this uncertainty isn’t really suited to the modern business world, and may, in fact, be causing a lot of onlookers to stay on the sidelines. Steve Wadsworth, president of The Walt Disney Company’s Internet group, told Seth Sutel, "We need measurement of the audience and their use of the system that’s clear, simple and actionable for a marketer. You need comparability with other media."

If that comparability is achieved, online advertising might go way up. It should go further up (or less far down), anyway, than it would have in the current economy without solid measurements.

The AP puts this year’s Web ad spending at $20 billion, by the way, up 25 percent from the previous period.

Out of about 1,000 shoppers, 81 percent said that the ability to shop anytime was the reason they chose to shop online during the holiday season. Seventy-seven percent said that saving time was their reason to shop online, followed by 61 percent who liked the ability to comparison shop and 56 percent who said it was easy to find items they were looking for online.

A small number of respondents, 46 percent cited low prices as a reason to shop online instead of in a store and 24 percent said low shipping costs were why they made purchases online.

"Coming into the holiday season, retailers are keenly focused on promotions, which certainly have the ability to move the needle in the short term," said Ken Cassar, vice president, industry solutions analytics, Nielsen Online.

"In the long run, however, convenience keeps people coming back to the Internet during the holiday season. It’s available whenever consumers are ready to shop, offers a wide selection, and obviates the need to fight the crowds at the mall."

Thirty-five percent of respondents indicated that they will spend between 25 and 50 percent of their holiday budget shopping online, while thirty-three percent expect to spend less than 25 percent of their overall holiday budget online.

"The fact that consumers expect to allocate the same share of what may be a shrinking overall holiday budget to the Web, suggests that online sales growth may not live up to the 20 percent annual growth rates we have seen in years past," said Cassar.

The value of online display advertising in China reached RMB 2.6 billion in Q3, 2007 an increase of 14 percent over Q2.  Total online advertising value for the year to date is RMB 6.6 billion.

The value of online display ads broken down by quarters was RMB 1.7 billion, RMB 2.3 billion and 2.6 billion. The peak for online advertising in China took place in September with RMB 1 billion recorded, the highest in the past nine months.

"The online advertising market in China is booming and catching up fast with advertising in traditional media. Judging by its current growth rate, we anticipate that the year will finish not only achieving double-digit growth in online advertising, but also reaching the
RMB10 billion mark in value terms," said Sail Ma, Analytic & Research Director, Nielsen Online, Greater China and Southeast Asia.

The cumulative number of advertisers for the year to date was 2,661 with 19,049 campaigns. The categories that contributed the most were Automobile, IT/Electronics, FMCG (CPG) and Finance, which accounted for 60 percent of total ad value in the China online market.

"The market will continue to grow, with estimated ad value increasing close to RMB 3 billion as we enter the last quarter of the year, and contributing to an estimated full year spending of RMB 10 billion," Ma said.

Nielsen’s NPM panel, currently consists of about 12,000 U.S. households and 35,000 people, it will increase to 37,000 homes and 100,000 people as the company completes the introduction of Local People Meters (LPM) into 56 local U.S. markets.

The larger sample size will help Nielsen to accomplish its objectives of its Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) initiative, which focuses on measuring online video and video on hand-held devices.

"This also has implications for Nielsen’s A2/M2 initiatives, all of which are built around the concept of ‘following the video,’ wherever it migrates," said Scott Springer, Product Leader of Audience Measurement for The Nielsen Company’s Media Segment.

"Our plans for out-of-home viewing, streaming video on the Internet, and ‘third screen’ devices such as cell phones and hand-held video players, are based on integrating these
measurements with traditional television measurement. This much larger national sample creates the necessary foundation for an integrated measurement approach."

Obama Leading All Candidates Online

Nielsen//NetRatings says, BarackObama.com had the most unique visitors in July, with 717,000. Democrat Hillary Clinton trailed with 437,000 unique visitors, followed John Edwards with 348,000 unique visitors.

Among Republican presidential hopefuls, Fred Thompson’s ImWithFred.com drew the most unique visitors in July, with 381,000 even though at the time he had yet to announce his candidacy. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani ranked No. 2 among Republicans online, with 124,000 unique visitors. Ron Paul followed with 113,000 unique visitors to his Web site and John McCain had 104,000 unique visitors to his campaign Web site.

"Consensus has been that Republicans have been slower to take advantage of the Web in their presidential campaigns, but Fred Thompson may be taking a cue from his Democratic counterparts," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

"Rather than shying away from buzz, the Thompson campaign is actively engaging in an online conversation. Thompson’s online announcement is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s."

According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics BlogPulse, blog buzz around the keyword "Fred Thompson" has been increasing in the days leading up to his announcement to run for president.

On YouTube, Democrats are leading in popularity of their politically-related video content, with 475,000 unique visitors in July, compared to the Republican’s 275,000. Visitors to the Republican videos are staying longer, with an average visit of over 3.5 minutes compared to an average visit of less than 1.5 minutes to the Democratic content.

John McCain continued to lead online advertising among presidential candidates in July, with a total of 7.7 million online ad impressions. Mitt Romney had the No.2 spot with 4.7 million impressions and Dennis Kucinich was third with 820,000 impressions.

Surprisingly, “Hillary Clinton dropped her Web display advertising efforts completely,” according to ClickZ’s Kate Kaye.  This doesn’t mean she’s broke – reports indicate that Clinton has raised more money than everyone other than Barack Obama – but the move still left just two other candidates to be tracked by Nielsen//NetRatings (which supplied the original data).

Those candidates are John McCain and Mitt Romney.  Kaye reports that “Romney ran about 3.4 million impressions of four ad creatives.”  In contrast, “McCain’s campaign, which ran about 8.7 million impressions in May, still appears to be testing a variety of ad creatives and sizes, placing ads on the same sites and networks as in April.”

Kayte goes on to give extensive information about (and samples of) McCain’s ads, and it really is an impressive effort on the candidate’s part.  Yet I usually don’t even look at ads, never mind click on them or let them influence a decision; for reasons like this, I should point out that the Nielsen//NetRatings data is open to interpretation, and that Web ad buying alone isn’t likely to carry the election, anyway.

Still, it’s interesting (and somewhat encouraging) to see a candidate embrace the Internet as an advertising medium.