From Search is the OS!

Nielsen BuzzMetrics just released the results of a new study establishing some strong correlation between online buzz and media spending. $20 million is the price tag for rising above the noise.

On average, the top 10% of products with the most buzz, spent nearly $20 million on paid media for the launch.
Companies that generated the next 40% of blog buzz spent an average of $15 million


I was surprised by the coverage head ratio, few brands generate most of the content. I would have expected the explosion of consumer generated content to actually surface the tail and put some light on smaller brands10% of brands accounted for 85% of total CPG buzz in the study.

The study sounds pretty encouraging for emerging semantic technology applications such as online buzz monitoring, tone polarity extraction and sentiment analysis. The more brand advertising dollars shifting online, the more requirements for evaluating impact on social media buzz.