ChasNote

Nielsen numbers analyzed by Ad Age suggest that consumer do prefer green brands, products and services, but that brands that push too hard on the theme — GE and Starbucks are called out — invite scrutiny that may bring with it an online backlash.

Silicon Alley Insider looks at Nielsen numbers to determine ABC has taken the #1 spot among websites attached to the broadcast networks, where — according to SAI — the CPMs can be as high as $70.

From Financial Times:

“‘We have found that social networks are not monetising as well as we were expecting,’ said George Reyes, chief financial officer, as Google reported its earnings for the final quarter of last year. Since Google has guaranteed to make minimum payments to a number of social networks that carry its advertising, principally MySpace, the slow growth of the business had left the company out of pocket and contributed to falling profit margins in the quarter, he added.”

And if you look at Nielsen Net/Ratings or Comscore numbers, you see that conversational or social media sites are driving most of the growth in online usage, so it’s fair to say it’s a very big deal. Perhaps Google needs a new approach to advertising within social-networking content.

From TechCrunch, which takes a look at Nielsen NetRatings numbers over the past few months. Andreessen was right, the strike is launching digital video into the mainstream. Add that to the cancellation of the Golden Globe Awards (the Oscars might be next) and NBC giving money back to advertisers, the Writers’ strike will go down as the turning point for video online.

I’m surprised to see the relatively small audiences Nielsen Online reports for the Big Four TV networks. From PaidContent:

“Nielsen Online counts ABC in first place with 10.6 million unique visitors in October, followed by NBC with 8.1 million uniques, CBS (NYSE: CBS) with 6.1 million and Fox with 3.4 million.”

Even if you assume there’s no duplication of audience (unlikely), the four networks combined are reaching only 28.2 million monthly uniques online. FM doesn’t yet subscribe to Nielsen, but Comscore reports the 125 independent sites that made up FM in September 2007 (it’s closer to 140 now) reach nearly 42 million monthly uniques. More evidence that as audiences migrate from offline to online media, they aren’t necessarily loyal to their former offline brands.

Ad Age breaks out the Nielsen C3 data by network.

ESPN2, it turns out, has more people watching its commercials than its programming. Kinda makes you wonder if Nielsen’s new methodology is fully buttoned up. Ad Age’s theory: “That boost is probably due to score-craving fans who click over to ESPN2 and its perma-scroll at the bottom of the screen.” Or maybe is the eye-catching beer commercials.

The big four broadcast networks are losing more than 7% of their viewers during commercial breaks — worse than the 3% average reported earlier.

I was on a panel this morning with Mary Hodder of Dabble and Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media, discussing revenue models for online video and audio. Stat from Mary: Each day 300,000 new video files are uploaded to the web. Stat from Ask A Ninja’s Kent Nichols: In August 07, there were 9.7 billion searches and 9.1 billion video views. Wow, that’s something to think about. Someone asked me how much money we’re all talking about; I said we should start by taking that $5 billion (3% of $162 billion in US TV spend) that Nielsen just announced is wasted because no one is watching. After that, we should take a look at the other $157 billion. Hey, maybe Nielsen is being generous to the networks.

From Ad Age:

“Initial commercial-ratings data, released for the first time by Nielsen Media Research today, reveal total viewership for commercial breaks on the five broadcast networks is on average 3% lower than it is for live viewing of programs those ads support.”

Call it $162 billion invested in US TV advertising each year. That’s $4,860,000,000 spent on viewers who didn’t see your ad. Oops.