The Nielsen Company and Facebook have entered into a multi-year, strategic alliance to help marketers better use the Internet to develop and market new products.

The alliance combines Facebook’s global consumer reach with Nielsen’s market research expertise to provide better insight and information to marketers around the world.

The first product of the collaboration, Nielsen BrandLift, is designed to provide marketers with effectiveness measurement for Facebook advertising. It will launch this week in the United States with select test partners and roll out to all Facebook advertisers in the coming months. BrandLift uses opt-in polls on Facebook’s homepage to measure consumer attitudes and purchase intent from display advertising that has appeared on the site.

The alliance is good news for brands and businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region. According to the most recent Nielsen Online Market Intelligence report, the most commonly visited websites in the region are entertainment and social websites (48 per cent) followed by search engines (34 per cent). Nearly a third (28 per cent) of regional consumers surveyed buy products/ services on the Internet.

“Facebook is a clear leader in a very important and fast growing social network industry and together we hope to provide a better understanding of consumer interactions with the three screens of television, mobile and personal computers,” said Piyush Mathur, regional managing director, Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, The Nielsen Company.

“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division.

“We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens. Together we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behaviour.”

“Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data,” said Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.

“The combination of our unique ability to quickly and effectively poll a sample of our more than 300 million users and Nielsen’s expertise in data analysis will give marketers access to powerful data they can use to understand and improve current and future campaigns.”-TradeArabia News Service