With the first “online Olympics” in the record books - the records broken are notable. More than 10,500 athletes representing 205 countries participated, with 87 nations taking home medals from at least one of the 302 medal events. One-hundred and thirty-two Olympics records were broken and the athletes set 43 new world records. And, of course, Michael Phelps set a few bars of his own.

But enough about those records…what did we mere mortals do online over the course of the games? The interest in China, continued improvements in technology and the prevalence of content on a 24/7 basis drove high online “participation” among U.S. fans during these Olympic games as measured in online media usage.

For details on Olympics-related Web traffic, online advertising and “buzz,” please see my complete wrap-up of the online games in the Information Center on our home page.

Tags: advertising, nbc, olympics

The first “online” Olympics are upon us and the games are breaking records in the pool and in the media. Online traffic to Olympics coverage has reached all-time highs, with U.S. traffic to NBCOlympics.com reaching 2.6 million visitors on August 8^th when the Beijing Olympics opened, compared to 330,000 unique visitors on the opening day of the 2004 Athens games. A rising tide appears to be lifting all boats: even traffic to other top sports-related Web sites, those not officially affiliated with the Olympics, grew in the week leading up to the games, growing an average of 12% between Friday August 1^st and Friday, August 8^th.

Much of this growth is explained by three relatively straightforward facts. First, the historic Chinese venue, combined with the global fascination with athlete celebrities, has led to remarkably high interest in these Olympic games, reflected positively in all media usage. Second, the 12- to 15-hour time difference between Beijing and the U.S. is making it difficult for Americans to watch the events live, and therefore many are turning to the Internet to supplement viewing. And third, NBC’s impressive array of video content - including more than 2,000 hours of live coverage - is attracting viewers to live events streamed during the work day.

Several key trends during the first week shed additional light on the in-roads online media is making during the games, including:

• The conversation around swimming is specific, but gymnastics just grows: Social Media has come a long way since the Athens games, and fans are buzzing online about the athletes. Online buzz around swimming seems to be very specifically centered on Michael Phelps: it spikes when he wins (basically, when he gets into the water) and declines on nights that he does not swim. Gymnastics however, has seen a slow, steady build in interest since the beginning of the games. While swimming had almost three times the buzz volume of gymnastics on August 11^th, by August 13^th, the decrease in buzz around swimming and the steady increase of conversation around gymnastics has brought the two events to a tie in buzz volume.
• Work week viewing of short-form content is driving video consumption: On the first Monday of the Olympics, the U.S. unique audience to the video section of NBCOlympics.com more than doubled, growing from slightly less than 860,000 to slightly more than 2 million. Because of the length of any given individual performance, many Olympic events, such as swimming, track & field and gymnastics are ideal for the short-form video consumption that most online viewers are used to. As events shift to soccer and basketball, we may see longer time spent viewing, but with smaller audiences, reflecting similar consumption patterns seen during the NCAA tournament or viewing of full-length TV programming online.
• The Internet is not replacing TV viewing: According to a Nielsen Online survey of 2,000 Internet users, 88% of people who are visiting NBCOlympics.com are also viewing the Olympics on TV and 80% of people using other Web properties to follow the Olympics are also viewing the games on TV. These numbers suggest even though NBC is streaming a significant amount of live Olympics content, fans continue to tune into the TV when it is available and convenient. Additionally, individuals who watch the Olympics both on TV and online are significantly more likely to remember seeing advertisements for key brands such as Coke, Lenovo and Visa.
• Speaking of advertising, there sure is a lot of it online: During the days leading up to the games and through the opening weekend (August 4 - 10), nearly 900 million ad impressions were served on NBCOlympics.com. The vast majority of the advertisers were brand advertisers including Unilever (98 million impressions) and U.S. Olympic team sponsors Bank of America (80 million), Coke (68 million) and Nissan (68 million). These large online campaigns illustrate trends seen elsewhere on the Internet where large brand advertisers extend advertising campaigns across media with significant investments. Advertisers making this level of investment also tend to put money toward advanced creatives, with 70% of the ads flash-based and 17% rich media. This differs greatly from the average where 56% of non-text based online ads are flash-based and 6% are rich media.

With week-one of the 2008 games in the history books, the Olympics have been exciting to follow on both TV and online - and we are looking forward to this week. With the games shifting to coverage of soccer, basketball and track & field, and an emphasis on longer events, we expect to see some changing usage trends along with buzz about new heroes.

Tags: nbc, olympics, online video

At 8 am this morning I fired up the laptop to watch the impressive US showing in the men’s 4 x 100 freestyle relay. The video quality and the player were both very impressive, and I didn’t really even mind downloading the SilverLight player to make the whole thing work. As I was surfing around the site, I started watching the preliminaries of women’s badminton. I am not per se a Badminton fan; I was just trying to get a sense of the content depth NBC was posting.

This is where a thought occurred to me, we spend a lot of time in this industry talking about The Long-Tail of Media. I even hosted a panel on the subject last week at Ad-Tech in Chicago. What we don’t normally think about though is that large Web sites have their own internal long tail. They have deep, highly niche content that is rarely viewed. When this content is viewed, however, it tends to be by highly engaged users.

Therefore, do large Web publishers have the same problem as small ones - the ability to monetize small trafficked content? Not really - they can sell the inventory as ROS or even to an ad network or some other type of remnant inventory clearance. But this inventory does tend to be valued much lower that other, more prominent sections. It seems to me, that these sites could do a better job here. They just have to find the niche that pulls these low traffic sections together and sell it appropriately.

Here at Nielsen Online, I’ve been working on a technique to do just this. Using SiteCensus Demographics we can optimize large publisher long-tail URLs into targeted ad products. It’s pretty neat, and it seems to be working well so far.

Tags: long tail, nbc, olympics

As a bunch of my loyal readers know (yes Mom, I’m talking to you) I spent about a year running online research for Weather.com and helping out with the cross-media research for the Weather Channel. As many of you also know, Landmark put the Weather properties on the block earlier this year and NBC last week confirmed that it was involved in exclusive negotiations.

If this deal happens, then it makes tons and tons of sense. First, NBC has been struggling over the past couple of years to establish its WeatherPlus brand in the market. This allows them to buy success rather than build it. From an online standpoint, this fits with other trends in the market. NBC has a history of buying online properties (iVilliage most notably) to expand its ad reach. This fits a similar bill, and while it doesn’t provide demos like the iVilliage purchase did, it provides some of the best geo targeting online. It also fits with market trends. CBS’s purchase of CNET earlier this year may have been more ambitious from an online standpoint, but this purchase may in fact bring NBC additional reach/inventory, which they could certainly use.

What does Weather.com get out of this? Well, clarity on its ownership. But more importantly from a market standpoint, it might bring some fresh eyes to a Web 1.0 site that has tons of potential (sorry weather.com guys, I know you’re trying). It also allows them to be part of broader ad packages now that their content can be bundled cross-media with NBC’s huge reach (rather than The Weather Channel’s somewhat smaller reach) and also group the weather.com health/women’s ad packages with iVillage.

Stay tuned to see if congratulations are in order to my buddies at the Weather Channel.

Tags: nbc, weather channel, weather.com