Leading news and industry organizations rely upon Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ ability to spot important online trends before they fully materialize. They frequently recognize us for objective, accurate and insightful analysis of consumer-generated media, blogging trends, word-of-mouth influence and other industry issues and trends.

News for 2006

12.18.06	Brands for the Chattering Masses "The days of sitting behind the focus-group wall are going the way of the buggy whip," said Mike Nazzaro, BuzzMetrics' president and chief operating officer. "We are fundamentally changing the way marketing and market research will be done in the future"
12.4.06	RepNation Empowers Consumers to Build Buzz Buzz agencies like RepNation "respect that consumers have a voice and represent a recognition that consumer advocacy is a highly effective marketing tool," said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. Yet Blackshaw, the co-founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, also cautioned that "businesses embarking on consumer marketing need to make sure that the recipients of this are aware that overt incentives [are involved]."
12.4.06	Countdown to the Superbowl "Nielsen BuzzMetrics is getting its ""Super Bowl buzz-monitoring program"" in full swing. Claiming more analysis than John Madden and Al Michaels, BuzzMetrics says it'll monitor the metrics from blogs and websites by volume, emotion, favorability, specific issue and penetration. They even say they'll monitor if specific spokespeople hurt or helped a campaign and who was talking about the ads most."
12.4.06	Develop Customer Relationships That Last Nielsen BuzzMetrics' VP/auto industry practice leader reveals the pressing need for autos to inject a measure of consumer affairs to drive satisfaction and loyalty, and explains how.
12.4.06	Book Excerpt: Giving Up Control and Other Scary Lessons In a study that Nielsen BuzzMetrics conducted of people who create content online, it discovered that they are more likely to have high-speed Internet connections, cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, laptops, and TiVos or other DVRs than people who don't create content online.
12.4.06	Major Marketers' Sites Attract Millions, Influencers "Visitors to [corporate and brand] websites have a much higher propensity to recommend products," said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, whose research shows more than 40 percent of people who give a brand email feedback are likely to recommend it to others.
12.4.06	Paid Blogging Trend Hits a Nerve, Spurs Competition Pete Blackshaw, CMO at CGM measurement firm Nielsen BuzzMetrics, isn't so sure an increase in advertiser-prompted blog posts will be valuable for advertisers, bloggers or blog readers in the long run. "We're now in this new phase of what I call 'chatterbacking,' where everyone wants to participate in the chatter…[advertisers] want a piece of the action immediately," he said. Blackshaw argues the social currency achieved by trusted bloggers could be eroded if the Web becomes cluttered with paid posts, which may reflect poorly on all blogs as time goes on.
10.3.06	Forrester cites Nielsen BuzzMetrics as a Leader Nielsen BuzzMetrics has been recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Brand Monitoring, Q3 2006 report, cited for its "strongest strategic vision" and a "scale unmatched by any other competitor." Click the link for a compliementary copy of the report.
9.24.06	Is This the Future of Advertising? Increaasingly, advertisers will test different advertising formats on the Internet as they search for the new holy grail of reaching customers, notes Marketing VP Max Kalehoff in this Boston Globe piece on advertising's future (free registration).
9.17.06	Procter's Cup Runneth Over With Folger's Video An online video of an ad for Folger's Coffee's "Tolerate Morning" campaign is taking the Internet by storm, a move that Nielzen BuzzMetrics CMO Pete Blackshaw calls "re-energizing" for Procter & Gamble.
9.5.06	Consumer-Generated Media is Fragile: Don't Mess It Up Nielsen BuzzMetrics CMO Pete Blackshaw discusses the pitfalls of "chatterbacking," a term he uses to refer to marketers who are aggressively exploring every possible technique to piggyback on CGM and online onversation.
8.30.06	Marketers Get Their Mascots In On Action at MySpace Wendy's new icon has a MySpace account, and so does Burger King's "King." VP Marketing Max Kalehoff notes that this new use of social media by marketers must balance the importance of members vs. over-commercialization.
8.23.06	Baby, You Can Drive My Car Alice LaPlante looks at some of the automobile ads and videos that find their way onto consumers' computer screens...sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. CMO Pete Blackshaw says autos, as high-involvement purchases, are prone to this kind of media.
8.23.06	Artists Take Painting to the Masses Sell la painting a day on the Internet? One artist is doing it succesfully, and has managed a top ranking at Nielsen BuzzMetrics' BlogPulse.com, according to Marie Puente's examination of this buy-it-online art trend.
8.17.06	Customer Feedback, or What I Learned on My Summer Vacation Writer Heidi Cohen, taking a tip from Nielzen BuzzMetrics' CMO Pete Blackshaw, uses a recent vacation experience to provide advice about listening to customers and consumers for some of the best marketing research available.
8.8.06	Corporate Blogging: Great Liberator or Oxymoron? CMO Pete Blackshaw, a contributor to ClickZ, looks at the newest evolution of blogging with a review of author Debbie Weil's "The Corporate Blogging Book."
8.2.06	Blogs, Social Sites Offer Plenty of Ad Space Reporter Theresa Howard examines the boom in online social media outlets, as well as the new opportunities they present for advertisers.
7.25.06	You, Too, Can Join Internet's Ad World "What's going on right now really represents a fundamental shift in media and marketing," says VP/Marketing Max Kalehoff, in this Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of consumer-created videos and ads (free registration).
7.17.06	Your Attention Please When younger audiences tune out traditional media, where do marketers turn? Follow the linked articles in this special series for a look at what savvy marketers are doing to "enroll consumers in shaping the marketing," as CMO Pete Blackshaw describes it.
7.12.06	Lost in the Blog Nielsen BuzzMetrics' study is quoted, as is Health/Pharm Practice Leader Lydia Worthington, in this lengthy examination of the pharmaceutical industry's energing focus on online buzz in a regulatory environment.
7.6.06	Social Marketing: Reach Out and Engage Customers Nielsen BuzzMetrics gets a nod from Heidi Cohen, who looks at the impact of social media on businesses, and how today's savvy businesses can react, respond and engage their clients, customers and employees.
6.30.06	Financial Firms Should Get Out And Socialize In this examination of the impact of social media, CEO Jonathan Carson notes that financial firms have an opportunity to interact with customers who discuss personal finance online.
6.30.06	Human Trails in Cyberspace: Social Scientists Create Maps of Online Interactions Matthew Hurst, Nielsen BuzzMetrics' director of science and innovation, is featured in Jeffrey Young's examination of the nature of human behavior in cyberspace.
6.29.06	Podcast from the iMedia Agency Summit Read a summary and download a podcast of CMO Pete Blackshaw's participation in a session on consumer-generated content, from the iMedia Agency Summit in May.
6.26.06	HyperQuake Creates Fun Online Marketing for Movies, Firms CMO Pete Blackshaw notes that trends such as "advergaming," in which online games are embedded in marketing events, can deepen viewer/customer involvement and engagement in brands, promotions and products.
6.22.06	Online 'Ad' is Here and it's Growing When cats duke it out at TV's Meow Mix House, it's a sign that TV advertising and programming are becoming one and the same. "We're going to see much, much more of this," says CMO Pete Blackshaw, in the Montreal Gazette.
6.20.06	BuzzMetrics Announces Deal with Tech Republic The first of a series of publisher market applications being made available by Nielsen BuzzMetrics is fueling the software/hardware "buzz" reviews at CNET's Tech Republic Web site
6.14.06	Nielsen BuzzMetrics Partner with TechRepublic Writes MarketingShift's Jason Dowdell: "Personally, I think the reviews are pretty schweet and it's nice to see Mashups greeted with more success in the mainstream internet landscape..."
5.15.06	Carmakers Woo Youth With Web videos Auto companies are increasingly relying on companies like Nielsen BuzzMetrics to measure the impact of online social media, such as search-engine friendly, consumer-created videos and other media. "We live in a world now where your brand equity is essentially the sum of your search results," says Max Kalekhoff, VP of marketing.
5.13.06	From Fans' Lips to Television Gods' Ears A piece about the growing influence of fan/viewer blogs and online discussion boards on TV popularity and ratings mentions Nielsen BuzzMetrics' TV-tracking service as one solution that's keeping track of the "buzz."
5.8.06	Measuring the Grapevine Measuring word-of-mouth impact is spreading to businesses, and the methods companies deploy depend on whether they're interested in listening or talking. BuzzMetrics is featured as a company that specializes in measuring media created by consumers.
5.1.06	Defending Yourself Against the Blogs Senior writer Tim Parry interviews CMO Pete Blackshaw and others new-media experts for tips on how today's savvy companies and PR professionals can better understand and leverage the blogging phenomenon
4.12.06	As Blogs Grow, So Does Spam Senior Researcher Natalie Glance offers hope in the face of a growth of spam blogs, or "splogs." That hope comes through better filtering methods by search engines, such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics' own BlogPulse.com, to weed out the fake blog posts.
4.11.06	Lenovo Makes Break with IBM Brand Survey data provided by Intelliseek (now Nielsen BuzzMetrics) is cited in an article about Lenovo's decision to establish itself and its ThinkPad independently of IBM
4.5.06	TV Goes to Blogs: Shows Add Extra Information as Treat for Fans CMO Pete Blackshaw is quoted in a USA Today article that examines the increasing use of blogs by TV shows and producers to maintain online buzz from episode to episode.
3.15.06	Blogger Gives Dark Secrets the First-Class Treatment Writer Maria Puente profiles Frank Warren, creator of the PostSecret blog, one of BlogPulse's top-ranked blogs. Part art, part therapy, part media, the blog is an example of how blogging is changing the way people interact and communicate on the Internet
3.15.06	The Bottom Line on Blogging Blogging is changing the way businesses communicate with other businesses and with their customers, and writer David Hayes look at the phenomenon via the corporate blogging boom.
3.3.06	Blog Buzz Marketing Helps Companies Catch Trends in the Making For leading-edge data, many companies turn to Internet "buzz" for early trends, and writer Steven Levingston talks to several Nielsen BuzzMetrics clients and analyzes 2006 Winter Olympics buzz to illustrate the phenomenon.
2.7.06	Can You TiVo to See Just the Ads "In some instances, said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, which is seeking to measure the postgame word of mouth about the commercials, consumers are saying they like the microsites better than the spots." "It's parallel to using TiVo,"" said Mr. Blackshaw, whose company is soon to become Nielsen Buzz Metrics. ""It's about consuming advertising at your own pace, and the microsites are almost like portals for watching ads."""
1.26.06	Shadyside Firm Helps Businesses Track What Bloggers are Saying The scientific team that makes up Intelliseek's Applied Research Center in Pittsburgh is profiled by writer Dan Majors, who examines the company's expertise at analyzing blog discussions for business and marketing intelligence
1.19.06	Blog Tracking Services Agree to Join Forces BuzzMetrics in New York, partly owned by VNU, is acquiring Intelliseek in Cincinnati for undisclosed terms. The combined company will be 50.1 percent owned by VNU, which also owns companies like Nielsen Media Research, and will operate under the Nielsen BuzzMetrics name with offices in Cincinnati and New York.
1.18.06	Word of Mouth: Coming to a Marketplace Near You ClickZ Columnist Dave Evans looks at the evolution of word-of-mouth marketing from -- you guessed it -- the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association's Florida conference
1.18.06	Intelliseek to be acquired by media company Reporter Greg Paeth examines VNU's announcement that it is acquiring majority ownership in BuzzMetrics and merging it with Intelliseek to create Nielsen BuzzMetrics
1.18.06	VNU Unites BuzzMetrics, Intelliseek Mickey Khan's coverage of the Intelliseek-BuzzMetrics acquisition by VNU includes one expert calling it "the beginning of the golden age of word of mouth marketing."
1.18.06	Intelliseek Sold, Faces Merger From its startup days in 1996 to its sale to VNU, Intelliseek has survived the ups and downs of the Internet company to find its place in the global marketplace
1.18.06	Word-of-Mouth Measurement Leader Emerges Under VNU Nielsen parent VNU is taking a majority stake in word-of-mouth measurement firm BuzzMetrics, which simultaneously announced plans to acquire rival Intelliseek. The new company will operate under the name Nielsen BuzzMetrics. "The combined company will be a strong and clear leader for the space, especially with the backing of VNU," said Nielsen BuzzMetrics CEO Jonathan Carson.
1.17.06	Intelliseek buyout channels Nielsen Ratings The Cincinnati Business Courier notes today's announcement that VNU is investing in BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek to create a Nielsen BuzzMetrics service
1.17.06	Web-Tracking Firm Intelliseek is Sold Technology writer James Pilcher examines the sale of one of the Tristate's premier Internet/technology companies and the creation of the new Nielsen BuzzMetrics service
1.17.06	VNU Unites BuzzMetrics, Intelliseek to Create Nielsen BuzzMetrics VNU, parent company to ACNielsen, invests in BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek to create a new standard in online media measurement, Nielsen BuzzMetrics
1.17.06	Nielsen to Measure Blog...Commentary Writer Jon Lafayette looks at the impact of the new Nielsen BuzzMetrics announcement on TV measurement
1.13.06	Companies Go Bloggy for Marketing Bloggers are becoming the sounding boards for increasingly measurable word-of-mouth campaigns, and writer Christopher Heun looks at the phenomenon
1.3.06	Why Companies Monitor Blogs Intelliseek is one of several companies featured in an article about the corporate and brand benefits of monitoring online discussions and blogs
1.3.06	The Power of Community Writer Terri Whitesel cites Intelliseek's 2005 Consumer-Generated Media Engagement Study in a look at the power of community -- people with shared interests and passions.

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