51%

Now this is a really great post for you data junkies out there.  The Nielsen Company (disclosure: I worked at Nielsen from 2006-2010) released an infographic triptych chock full of interesting stats surrounding the social, local, and mobile habits of today’s digital consumers.  There were several options to choose from for today’s statistic but I thought one of the more important figures was the 51% of surveyed consumers who “…were influenced by standard web ads on social media sites that show which of [their] friends liked or followed the advertised brand.”  Only 46% of respondents were influenced by ads on the same social media sites when they weren’t “liked” or otherwise endorsed by their friends.  It isn’t entirely clear what action resulted from those consumers who were “influenced” but it does clearly establish a strong correlation between the efficacy of ads (in this case an 11% uplift) when a friend or colleague expresses support or a preference for the same brand.  For those of us who are very close to the social media/networking phenomenon these figures are probably not surprising and might even be slightly underwhelming but an 11% increase in performance is nothing to be sneezed at either.

View full graphic with footnotes from The Nielsen Company.

Related articles:

• IPO underwriting costs (marshallstanton.com)
• AOL’s dial-up subscribers (marshallstanton.com)
• Coffee consumption (marshallstanton.com)
• American mobile application penetration (marshallstanton.com)
• Google’s digital advertising dominance (marshallstanton.com)