The Nielsen company and Facebook form strategic alliance

Industry Leaders to Use Nielsen Products to Help Marketers Better Measure Online Advertising Impact and Realize Greater ROI

The Nielsen Company and Facebook have announced a multi-year, strategic alliance to help marketers better use the Internet to develop and market new products.

The alliance combines Facebook’s global consumer reach with Nielsen’s market research expertise to provide better insight and information to marketers around the world.

The first product of the collaboration, Nielsen BrandLift, is designed to provide marketers with effectiveness measurement for Facebook advertising.  It will launch this week in the United States with select test partners and roll out to all Facebook advertisers in the coming months.  BrandLift uses opt-in polls on Facebook’s homepage to measure consumer attitudes and purchase intent from display advertising that has appeared on the site.

The alliance is good news for brands and businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region. According to the most recent Nielsen Online Market Intelligence report, the most commonly visited websites in the region are entertainment and social websites (48%) followed by search engines (34%). Nearly a third (28%) of regional consumers surveyed buy products/ services on the Internet.

Piyush Mathur, Regional Managing Director, Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, The Nielsen Company, said: “This alliance marks an exciting step in developing contemporary research capabilities to provide into a wide range of media and consumer insights. Facebook is a clear leader in a very important and fast growing social network industry and together we hope to provide a better understanding of consumer interactions with the three screens of television, mobile and personal computers.”

“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division.  “We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens.  Together we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior.”

“Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data,” said Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.  “The combination of our unique ability to quickly and effectively poll a sample of our more than 300 million users and Nielsen’s expertise in data analysis will give marketers access to powerful data they can use to understand and improve current and future campaigns.”

Key MENA Internet Data, as Reported by Nielsen Online Market Intelligence system – (August 2009)

• Total of 500 million page impressions are downloaded every month across MENA
• Browsers log on for a total of 100,000,000 internet session every month
• The average time a browser spends on each webpage is 1 minute and 16 seconds
• The average time a browser spends on a website is 8 minutes and 15 seconds.
• A browser tends to revisit a website around 3.2 times every month
• 64% of consumers in the MENA region are connected to the internet from their home, followed by 12% from work and 11% from internet cafes.
• 79% of consumers connect to the net on a daily basis
• 37% of browsers spend more than 29 hours on the internet every month.
• 79% consumers use Windows XP operating system in the MENA region
• 58% of consumers use DSL/Broadband connections to connect to the net, whilst only 11% use dial up connections in MENA
• 28% consumers in the MENA region buy products/ services on the internet,
• The most commonly visited websites in the region are entertainment and social websites (48%) followed by search engines (34%), while 34% of consumers commonly visit local news and information websites in the region.