KEY POINTS:
Marketers are listening to online chat with Nielsen Online's New Zealand research operation launching a search and analysis tool of brands discussed in blogs and message boards.
New Zealand is the fifth country where Nielsen has launched "Buzzmetrics" research, part of its push into word of mouth advertising - through consumer generated media.
The research tool has been established in the US market for seven years. The UK and Germany followed and Buzzmetrics began in Australia last week.
Nielsen online senior analyst Tony Boyte said bloggers and resulting online conversations on their sites provided insight of how brands are perceived.
Buzzmetrics is built on preparatory search engine software linked with a team of people who provide analysis.
As well as tracking, analysing and measuring issues, the market research tool aims "to identify threats, opinion shifts, predictions, and other market-shaping forces".
Buzzmetrics is tracking 3972 unique New Zealand blogs, with 100 selected blogs at any one time.
He agreed that the blogs did not always reflect mainstream opinion and some had a small amount of traffic.
But the job of analysts was to provide context to research.
He agreed there was a danger of people planting information on blogs but said that Buzzmetrics had capabilities to identify and disregard these.
He said Buzzmetrics was being marketed in the run up to the general election.
Boyte said that the new analysis marked a commercial coming of age for blogs in the New Zealand market.
Nielsen cites its global survey on the attitudes of online consumers around the world towards advertising.
It showed the most trusted form of advertising were recommendations from other consumers (78 per cent), adverts in newspapers (63 per cent) and online comments (61 per cent).
