Nielsen looked at its Buzzmetrics data to find out where people spent their time online during the year. As many watch television and have favorite shows, they also discuss them online.

None received more buzz than My Name Is Earl, the NBC sitcom vehicle for Lee. American Idol followed Earl, and was the only "reality show" in Nielsen’s top ten buzzed-about programs.

Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons, and West Wing rounded out that top five. Oprah, Lost, Sex and the City, House, and Battlestar Galactica followed them.

Nielsen published several lists, including one on the percentage of adults who either read or contribute to blogs within the past thirty days. One might guess the tech-heavy Bay Area would top this list, but that guess would be incorrect.

Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon, both had higher percentages of readers/contributors than the San Francisco/San Jose area. Seattle/Tacoma and Honolulu trailed that trio, according to Nielsen.

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Web 2.0 Talks About Car Pricing

“Millions of consumers go online daily to talk about and research cars prior to making a purchase,” notes a new Nielsen BuzzMetrics report.  “In fact, online buzz for transaction pricing and incentives across automotive discussion forums is up 40% since January 2007.”

Forums can connect prospective buyers with current owners, and provide figures concerning both new and used cars.  Manufacturers’ sites, by contrast, only state sticker prices on new cars.  And there’s no telling what you’ll hear from an auto dealer.

Other sources also exist, of course.  BuzzMetrics constructed what’s known as a brand association map around the word “incentives,” and the term “Edmunds” appears very close to the center of the map.  Edmunds, which specializes in pricing, professional reviews, and hard statistics, is one of the best friends a car shopper could hope for.

Still, even Edmunds has social components, and it looks like these Web 2.0 attributes are set to play an increasingly large role in the automotive market.

After examining blog buzz volume, ad spending, purchase intentions and actual product sales, Nielsen found the best indicator of blog buzz around a newly launched consumer-packaged goods (CPG) is a large advertising budget. The report "The Origin & Impact of CPG New Product Buzz" was from Nielsen BuzzMetrics and BASES, a provider of new product forecasting and consulting.

The report looked at 80 new CPG products across a number of subcategories, launched in the U.S. between 2005 and 2006. On average, the top 10 percent of products with the most blog buzz, spent close to $20 million on paid media for the launch. Companies that received the next 40 percent of blog buzz spent an average of $15 million and companies that were in the bottom 50 percent spent an average of $5 million.

"Splintering media sources along with emerging consumer-generated media are challenging one-way, mass-media advertising models," said Robert Mooth, vice president of product development, for BASES, and an author of the study.

"However, our analysis shows that traditional mass media continue to play a critical role for most CPG brands. What has changed is that online buzz and consumer expression have entered the fray, resulting in a complex yet inseparable relationship within the overall marketing mix for many types of products."

Not all CPG subcategories and products had the same level of blog buzz. Ten percent of brands accounted for 85 percent of total CPG blog buzz in the study. Over-the-counter drug brands have a higher blog buzz due to consumer’s involvement with them.

"Most CPG products are ‘everyday’ items, lacking in distinction and therefore propensity for buzz," said Kate Neiderhoffer, director of methodology, Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

"However, there are some exceptions to the rule, as evidenced by brands like Red Bull, Altoids, Crystal Pepsi and Viagra. The CPG industry should challenge itself to bring more innovative products to market, cultivated with more innovative marketing. The buzz will follow."

iPhone Has People Talking

The buzz around the iPhone launch was 33 percent higher the week ending June 23, 2007 versus the average of the past four weeks.

"Apple’s iPhone is riding an unprecedented wave of pre-launch conversation and expectations are mounting," said John Latona, Vice President of Client Services, Consumer Technology, at Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

"Starting next week, the nature of the conversation will shift to very explicit and descriptive commentary about actual experiences with the product, and this will have a huge impact on ongoing trial, advocacy and sales."

Nielsen BuzzMetrics examined online discussion and found that the main attractions of the iPhone were the anticipated features, visual voicemail and the inclusion of a music library.

Negative issues raised in conversation were high price, lack of a keyboard and concerns over AT&T‘s coverage.

Traffic to Apple’s site spiked after the iPhone announcement. The iPhone section of the site had 1.7 million unique visitors in January 2007. The keyword "iPhone" was searched 870,000 times. In February and March there were 980,000 unique visitors per month with a drop-off in April to 637,000 unique visitors. Traffic to the site increased again in May with 701,000 unique visitors.

When it comes to measurements and numbers, there is one figure Nielsen won’t discuss about its final pickup of the remaining BuzzMetrics pieces: the price, which was not disclosed.

Jonathan Carson, BuzzMetrics’ CEO, said in an email the company will combine with NetRatings, the Internet audience measurement service run by Nielsen. The two will form a new unit that will track consumer behavior online.

The deal will give Nielsen an even greater grasp on what people see online, and throughout all kinds of media. Nielsen chairman and CEO David Calhoun described in a statement just how much of this will be within the Nielsen ecosystem now:

More broadly, we can provide our clients with even more insightful information when Internet/Online consumer usage is combined with what products and services consumers buy (ACNielsen), what consumers watch on television (Nielsen Media Research), and what books, films, audio and video usages consumers interact with across multiple platforms.

Nielsen is going to know a lot about people no matter what they do, online or off. Carson views the development as a positive one, as it validates the importance of consumer-generated media, i.e., blogs, videos, podcasts, and social media.

Marketers should like this comprehensive tie-in of information, and likely will come to expect that of other firms. It should be interesting to see what other deals take place as marketers and measurement companies try to pry as much information as they can out of the public’s media consumption habits.

“You are here because you have a problem with the way livejournal.com is being run graphically; obstructive interfaces popping up (ie: customize area); lack of customer-service displayed by the team in relation to ‘rebuilding’ the site (ie: one of the many truths); or clearly insane string of ‘fiddle-faddle’ from the Support Team, who is giving positive feedback where negativity is required.”

That’s the opening paragraph for a petition against LiveJournal interface changes, posted June 16th, 2006 and linked to by nearly 800 unique authors.

According to research from Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the LiveJournal post handily edged out a trio of entries from Crooks And Liars. The August 2006 ‘State of the Blogosphere’ post by Technorati founder Dave Sifry rounded out that top five.

Crooks And Liars occupied 22 places on the Buzzmetrics list of top 100 blog posts for 2006, the most of any blog. Malkin had 18 spots, while sites like Engadget, Think Progress, and Boing Boing also held multiple places in the roster.

Google’s Official Blog had eleven posts make the group. Their most linked post was one about the company’s acquisition of Writely, the online word processor.

Google also served as the topic of discussion for the fifteenth most-linked post. That one came from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which expressed concerns about Google Desktop and recommended consumers not use the product.

A few well-known sites with significant traffic did not have a lot of places referring to their posts, though, as Nielsen noted:

We have to close with the 25th most-linked post, to the intrepid Amanda Congdon, whose arrival at the House of Mouse as an ABC News featurette began with her July departure from Rocketboom.

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“A minority of highly influential blogs continues to influence the broader conversation on the web,” said Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “However, unique circumstances and events, such as the LiveJournal protest against proposed interface changes, can resonate with passionate stakeholders and catapult lesser-known blogs to the top”.

Coming in at the number 2 spot were crooks and liars post on Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and a comedic monologue he gave at the White House. The Colbert post was linked to 622 posts on 603 blogs.

MSNBC’s Keith Oleberman held the number 3 position with commentary on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Olberman was linked to 359 posts on 340 blogs.

David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog-search engine Technorati had the fourth most popular post with his state-of the blogosphere report. His post was linked to 339 post on 298 blogs.

Rounding out the remainder of the top blogs were Keith Olberman at number 5, Support Denmark: Why The Forbidden Cartoons Matter at number 6, SNL : If Al Gore were President at 7, Milking it? at number 8, State of the Blogosphere was 9 and 10.

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The folks at Forrester have completed what looks to be a pretty comprehensive analysis of the most popular brand monitoring services (e.g., Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Cymfony, Biz360, Umbria, Brandimensions, MotiveQuest, and Factiva).

I can’t tell for certain how deep this report goes, it costs a thousand bucks, but they’ve posted a Q&A and an executive summary along with the graphic you see embedded here, which tease some of the findings. A few of the nuggets (verbatim):

• Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Cymfony are market Leaders, thanks to their comprehensive technology platforms and extensive data source coverage.
• MotiveQuest – with the most services-focused and strategy-oriented offering – finishes as the leading Strong Performer.
• Biz360′s focus on traditional PR monitoring services lands it as a midrange Strong Performer.
• Rounding out the Strong Performer category are Factiva, with its strong print orientation, and Umbria, which excels at speaker segmentation.
• Brandimensions falls into the Contender category, with targeted expertise in the automotive, entertainment, and pharmaceutical industries and an approach that relies heavily on human filtering.

Brand monitoring online is top-o-mind for a lot of companies that recognize the need for conversational marketing and communication, but lack the tools and insights to analyze and measure the impact and success of their efforts. It’s a real pain, and unfortunately, where there’s pain there’s also exploitation. I think some of the popular brand monitoring services have a reputation of over-promising and under-delivering — which is why I’m glad to see a report like this surface.

Brand monitoring and sentiment mining online is a tough nut to crack, I personally don’t think any of these companies have it nailed yet, but some are getting close.

For that reason, it’s good to see that Forrester will be revisiting this report next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a big shake up in the rankings, perhaps even some new players to watch. Forrester, if you’re listening, I’d totally understand if you wanted to send this to me for “review.”;p

Related Posts: Social Media Monitoring

Synthesizing Social Media

Mining and Monitoring the Conversation Gap

Blog Monitoring As PR Service

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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We have ABC for print, Arbitron for radio, Nielsen for TV, comScore and Nielsen-Netratings for Web sites. These companies have built a multi-billion dollar syndicated research industry because marketers need data on which they base their ad buys.
Today another shift is taking place in the media world. Consumers are creating their own content – blogs, podcasts and the like – and distributing it via RSS. Some of the larger consumer-generated properties are being grouped into networks and sold like media. These include Federated Media, 9Rules, Know More Media, Weblogs Inc, Podshow, Podtech, Gawker Media and others. These too must be audited, but so far they’re not.

Everyone tries hard to spin data a certain way to make it seem like they’re delivering more qualified eyeballs/ears than their competitors. Auditing keeps publishers humble. With social media networks, however, the game is more than just about numbers. It’s about reaching influencers. This means that marketers need auditing that goes beyond reach and explores influence meterics. So far, Nielsen BuzzMetrics is best positioned to develop the kind of syndicated research marketers crave, but I think this could be anyone’s game to grab if they act fast.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Luckily Pete Blackshaw is helping me look at search in a whole new light. “In categories such as automotive, electronics, and healthcare, most purchase behavior starts with search,” says Blackshaw, chief marketing and customer satisfaction officer for Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

In a recent presentation to PRSA’s Cincinnati Chapter, Blackshaw compared search to what P&G calls the first moment of truth, or the first interaction a customer has with a product. More and more, this moment takes place online before a consumer steps foot in a store. Search engines can commoditize any product or service-consider a six-figure machine tool. Based on a few key specifications, a company can whittle down a list of vendors before ever contacting a manufacturer.

Searching for Brand Equity
The above supports the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), but the real opportunity for public relations lies in social media relations. Consumers are creating the first moment of truth online. Jupiter Research notes that 26 percent of the top search results for the world’s 20 largest brands is consumer generated.

Pontiac, or their agency, knows this and had the chutzpah to push customers to Google to learn more about them. The Iams Company and Wal-Mart won’t follow Pontiac’s example anytime soon.

Bottom Line?

As consumer-generated media continues to morph and challenge mainstream media, we risk serious impact on our clients’ brands and our own future if we do not engage this audience.

Edelman’s over-analyzed interaction with bloggers on behalf of Wal-Mart is simply online media relations in a Web 2.0 world. Blackshaw calls it “PR in the age of consumer control.” I call it social media relations. Edelman’s actions were above board. The industry’s ad nauseam discussion over this just shows how much we have to learn.

There is also a PR opportunity in SEO, but it’s a subset of what we do online. Search relevance is a benefit of strong messaging. SEO should be a gut check that your content is on message. The danger in SEO is it tends to focus more on a client’s site and its competitors. We need a broader view of SEO that includes employees and customers; each audience can impact search results. Public relations can easily bring that broad view to this important discipline.

Blackshaw offers more insight into the impact search has on brand in his recent Click Z column on defensive branding.

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Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.