NM Incite

NM Incite Philippines Presentation 19 10 11 Final

Yahoo-Nielsen Net Index 2011

PH – Net Index 2011 PR Final

If you check the Net Index study it says there that the coverage covered only 22 urban cities in the Philippines. This is the basis of their clarification that they sent me a few days ago. What probably happened is that the reporter wasn’t able to see the fine print and didn’t check the other presentation anymore. I can’t blame her since the font was really used and I think Nielsen should have indicated it in the slide already that the 13M figure was based only on urban cities.

So there you go. Mystery solved.

The “8.5M Filipino users of Facebook”, on the other hand, wasn’t included or mentioned during the presentation of Nielsen. The reporter who gave the report probably came up with her own estimate.

Here’s the full e-mail:

Mr. Carlo Ople
Editor
News Media

Dear Carlo,

This is in reference to your blog entry “AC Nielsen says only 8.5 million on Facebook, 13M on Internet?” posted recently. The blog quotes a news report by Sandra Aguinaldo of GMA News that says there is a growing opportunity for web-based entrepreneurs in the country because of the increasing number of internet users. The report says that Nielsen pegged the number of Filipino internet users at 13-million, including some 8.5 million users on social networking site Facebook. While we appreciate Ms Aguinaldo and GMA News for the positive tone of the report, we would like to point out that the quoted figures were actually not accurate.

The report was based on an Industry Update which Nielsen held for its customers last Oct. 19 in Intercontinental Hotel. Ms Aguinaldo’s report was based on the presentation of Justin St. Pierre, Associate Director for Product Leadership of Nielsen (Asia Pacific), and on a subsequent interview with Jay Bautista, Managing Director for Media Group of Nielsen (Philippines). We would however, like to clarify that the 13-million internet users as mentioned by Ms Aguinaldo is the estimate based on the recent Yahoo! Nielsen Net Index Report which surveyed respondents aged 10 year and older across 22 urban cities. The figures presented are reflective only of total urban Philippines and not the total country.

As to the Facebook users, we assume that Ms Aguinaldo came up with her own estimation as nowhere in the presentation of Mr. St. Pierre nor in the interview with Mr. Bautista was 8.5 million users mentioned. What Mr. St. Pierre said in his presentation though, still quoting the Yahoo! Nielsen Net Index (2011), was that 82% of the Filipino internet users in Urban Philippines used Facebook in past month. That should have translated into 10.6-million and not 8.5-million (users in Urban Philippines).

Lastly, we wish to clarify that the report was released by Nielsen, not AC Nielsen. With the new corporate direction, our company is now simply Nielsen.

Attached, please find the presentation of Mr. St. Pierre and the latest Yahoo! Nielsen Net Index.

We hope this letter clarifies the matter.

Sincerely,

ZENAIDA S. SANTOS
Communications, Media Group
Nielsen

Thank you to Nielsen for clarifying the matter and we’d also like to give a shout out to IMMAP’s Hans Roxas-Chua for bringing this issue to them.

Let’s take a look at Facebook. According to the Facebook Ads Tool, we have around 26.5M Filipino accounts. The GMA report shows that there are only 8.5M Filipinos who use Facebook? That means that 2/3 of the total accounts of Filipinos on Facebook are either fakes or duplicates?

Here’s the news report:

By the way, Ricci Parto is not the one presenting the data. She’s just saying that there’s business to be found online. Cleared this with her via Facebook.

What do you guys think about the data Nielsen presented? Personally I think it’s unbelievable. Would definitely love to hear from Nielsen how they did the study or if the data presented in the news report is accurate.

Anyway, using that formula here are the numbers:

Filipinos on Facebook: 23,424,520
Filipinos on Twitter: 4,016,345
Filipinos on LinkedIn: 473,978

If this is true then Anne Curtis has 25% of the entire Twitter population following her, haha.

References:
Asian Correspondent
Inquirer for the multi colored Twitter birds image, hehe.

Anyway, the question now is if this is a good or bad thing for us as a country. Facebook has a lot of benefits but it also has a lot of cons. It can drastically lower productivity, lower attention span, and serve as the ultimate distraction for the youth. If you’re a parent please make sure to set guidelines for your children on how they use the internet and social networking sites because it can be very addictive.