The automotive industry has witnessed an extremely volatile and game-changing 2008. As we close out the year, here is a look back at the top 25 automotive brands that consumers discussed online in 2008 relative to all online discussion.

We look forward to opening a new automotive chapter tomorrow and tackling the many challenges that are ahead in 2009.

From our automotive family to yours….Happy New Year!

Ah, the last week of December. Agencies are closed, most of my media clients are on vacation (or are at least having long lunches with questionable drink choices) and things generally slow down around the holidays. The next couple of weeks seem like a perfect time for the Media Analytics team to put out our “2009 Ones to Watch” list. Here are the rules: three of us (me, Chuck Schilling and John Brauer) are each going to post two companies to watch in 2009. We’re each supposed to pick a big hitter (a name who you will almost certainly know) and a smaller up-and-coming player. The only rules are that the companies have to be media players (no retail or CPG for the media team) and that you have to be able to support your argument with data (after all, we are Nielsen).

I can only hope in the end, our list is as relevant as this one.

Happy New Year!

The Media Analytics Team (Jon Gibs, Chuck Schilling, John Brauer and David Crowell).

My colleague Melissa Davies published findings earlier this year on the role of the Internet in healthcare, which found that while doctors are still the primary source for healthcare information, the Internet is a close second. In this new era of collaborative care, patients have access to an array of online tools to arm them with more detailed information about their conditions and treatments than ever before. Specifically, social media vehicles are expanding and accelerating the pace at which patients and caregivers can gain access to drug treatment ratings. Similar to how an online shopper may peruse consumer reviews and ratings for, say, a flat screen TV on WalMart.com, today’s patients can get a similar quick fix.

A new crop of sites such as PatientsLikeMe.com and iGuard.org enable patients to quickly access a trove of treatment ratings based on the results of its online participants. Each site varies a bit (PatientsLikeMe.com is intensely personal, featuring user images and detailed personal accounts, whereas iGuard.org presents limited demographic data) but they are similar in their approach. PatientsLikeMe and iGuard both field surveys to capture patient treatment experiences, including dosing, length of treatment, side effects and efficacy. The results are tabulated and presented as an aggregate of all patient experiences. With just a few clicks, users can learn why a patient takes a prescription and why they’ve stopped taking it. Another site, DailyStrength.org, publishes “success” rates based on the efficacy of all users currently taking a medication.

By literally putting a human face on this vast repository of patient information and fostering social networking, these sites distinguish themselves from predecessors like DrugRatingz.com, and even established sites like WebMD.com, which also allows users to rate treatments. I was curious to see what traffic to the sites looked like. As yet, traffic is quite low and below our minimum reporting levels, but directionally this data seems to indicate that awareness of review sites is gradually increasing.

My instincts tell me that patients are not going to make a wholesale change and stop engaging in discussion forums, but they will incorporate a search or two on these sites as part of their information gathering. I expect that we’ll see discussion of these ratings pop up in the leading forums as well. At the end of the day, managing a disease or condition is not a simple task and no single site is going to be the silver bullet to allay all consumer questions and concerns.

The Winter @Plan survey results reveal that the U.S. online population age 18 or older, is less likely to purchase a car / truck in the next 6-months when compared to the Fall results (10.1% vs. 11.8%). I’m sure none of this is shocking news, but simply another confirmation of the economic times. The opportunity lies in understanding where those consumers with the highest probability to purchase in the next 6-months go online. This kind of market intelligence will allow for savvy online ad spend and higher ROI.

The above five automotive sites naturally over-index in likelihood to purchase a car / truck in the next 6-months. Below is a sneak peek of five out of 500+ general interest ad-supported sites where visitors are yielding a higher probability to purchase a car / truck in the next 6-months relative to the U.S. online population. These types of sites that over-index on likeliness to purchase a car / truck should be considered in the automotive online advertising plan for 2009.

It’s official now that we are in a recession, one that has been particularly tough on the retail sector because consumer spending is the lowest it has been in years. However, these past few weeks we have seen a surprising uptick in traffic across the sites we track in our Nielsen Online Holiday Shopping Index. The numbers indicate we have had 10% growth in traffic vs. last year on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Most retailers, analysts, pundits and economists are pleasantly surprised, which made me wonder if the retailers’ advertising strategy had anything to do with their success in driving Web traffic.

Retailers in particular must have been in a tough spot when deciding how to advertise. Given the economy, they definitely want to be extremely prudent with their marketing dollars, even erring on the side of significantly cutting down on online advertising around the holiday season (as we can see from the chart below). To give you an idea, online advertising across the retailers we track in our Index was down quite a bit in the weeks leading to Black Friday and Cyber Monday on a week by week basis compared to 2007. For example, image-based impressions were down by 51% versus 2007 two weeks prior to Black Friday week. It seems the strategy retailers adopted was to hold back on advertising during the weeks leading to Black Friday, and invest in a “surge” just a couple of weeks prior to Thanksgiving/Black Friday, the most crucial weeks (a gain of 17% in ad impressions two weeks prior to Black Friday 2008 vs. that in 2007). I looked to see if retailers moved their ad dollars to sponsored links instead, but those impressions are also dramatically lower this year versus last. Overall, there is evidence that retailers have cut back on their ad investments, understandably so.

While this might seem contrary to the objective all retailers were after this year - to drive sales in a difficult economic climate, one plausible explanation for this phenomenon is that retailers focused on an aggressive cost containment strategy and invested in promotional tactics such as low-cost emails, discounts, rebates, etc., without the advertising muscle behind these promos. This strategy seems to have paid off in the short-term, resulting in the 10% traffic increase this year on important shopping days.