Nielsen

Nielsen president of global media products Steve Hasker told Bloomberg that among Nielsen's intentions in acquiring Arbitron is to begin measuring online radio services like Pandora.

Bloomberg writes Nielsen "wants to offer its advertisers a unified system that measures audiences across multiple forms of media, making it easier for them to make ad-buying decisions -- whether on TV, radio or the Web."

StreetInsider credited the news for a Pandora stock price bump after speaking to analyst Rich Tullo. Tullo thinks the webcaster could likely profit from rising ad volume as large media buying agencies adopt this new Nielsen integrated media platform.

Arbitron's history with webcasting, and Pandora in particular, hasn't been entirely smooth. Since the dawn of Internet radio, Arbitron has repeatedly entered, then exited, net radio audience measurement. Pandora last year (with Edison Research, here) began releasing its own listening stats, using Arbitron's common broadcast radio metrics (Pandora is also measured by Triton Digital's Webcast Metrics, using Internet radio's slightly different metrics). Arbitron (more in RAIN here) and many of its broadcast clients (from Inside Radio via NPR Digital Services here) criticized the stats, calling them unreliable and nonsensical.

Arbitron meanwhile has long had ready -- but never released -- a cross-platform radio ratings service (more here), and as recently as its Q3 conference call told shareholders the service "would use online logs to measure Internet radio listenership and include all types of Web radio, from terrestrial stations' streams to services such as Pandora" (more here). Presumably for this service, Arbitron partnered with AdsWizz (here). It's been suspected that pressure from its broadcast radio clients, who likely wouldn't welcome competition from webcasters and broadcasters around the world, has prevented Arbitron from launching the service. 

But it may not be too late for Arbitron to get back into the Internet radio ratings game. Pandodaily's Erin Griffith wrote yesterday, "It’s a market that’s still young enough to be figuring things out. With a new owner and possibly new attitude, Arbitron could be there on the ground floor."

Read Bloomberg here. Read StreetInsider.com here. Read Pandodaily here. H/T to The Verge here.

Nielsen and Twitter have forged a deal to create the "Nielsen Twitter TV ratings" to measure the total audience for social TV activity on the social media platform. Couple that with today's news that Nielsen is buying radio ratings leader Arbitron, and smart folks like Tom Taylor begin to ask, "Can radio be far behind?"

There's no real indication of such a development yet, but it's not hard to imageine that "a new radio morning show could be 'trending,' one of these days," suggests Taylor. Read more from him today here.

Read about Twitter TV ratings at LostRemote here and GigaOm here.

According to Nielsen research, as of July, 74% of 25-34 year old mobile customers now own smartphones, a surge from last year's 59% for that group.

However, the most dramatic increase of smartphone penetration was among teenage (13-17) mobile customers, with the majority (58%) now owning a smartphone. That figure was just 36% a year ago.

"Among most age groups smartphones represent the majority of U.S. mobile subscribers, but American teens were the age group adopting smartphones the fastest," said Nielsen analyst Nichole Henderson in a press release. "As teens increase in their share of smartphone owners, mobile carriers and manufacturers should consider how to market to this growing group."

Overall, 55.5% of U.S. mobile subscribers own smartphones, up from 41% a year previous.

The graph, and press release, are from Nielsen, here.

The new Music 360 study from Nielsen shows that in the U.S. "more teens listen to music through YouTube than through any other source (64%), followed by radio (56%) and iTunes (53% ) and CDs (50%)." 

Nearly half (48%) of Americans says they use radio most often to discover new music.

More than half (54%) said they have music player apps on their smartphones, followed closely by radio apps (47%).

Read more from Nielsen on Music 360 here.

Well we knew this milestone was coming (RAIN coverage here) and now it's arrived. Nielsen says 50.4% of mobile users in the U.S. own a smartphone, "making dumbphones the minority for the first time," writes Engadget.

So now a (slim) majority of cellphone-toting folks in the U.S. potentially have the ability to stream Internet radio on the go. Indeed, the smartphone market is pretty much divided between the app-friendly platforms of Google's Android (claiming 48.5% of smartphone users) and Apple's iOS (32%). "Other platforms trailed well behind," reports Engadget, which has more coverage here.

Hispanics are one of the leading demographics in terms of mobile usage, smartphone penetration and web radio listening, according to a new round of studies.

Nielsen found that Hispanics "outpace all other ethnic groups in mobile downloads of music and photos" and are "heavy phone users in general." The demo is 25% more likely to follow a brand online, Nielsen says, and is more likely to consume mobile multimedia.

Meanwhile, eMarketer found that around 43% of Hispanics own a smartphone in 2012 (compared to the overall rate of 36.6%). The company predicts nearly 63% will own a smartphone by 2016.

As we reported last week, The Media Audit found that more than 25% of Hispanics had listened to Internet radio in the past 7 days (RAIN coverage here). That outpaces the overall adult 18+ rate of under 20%.

Interestingly, The Media Audit also found that web radio is popular amongst cellphone-only consumers. And Nielsen found that Hispanics are less likely to have a home broadband connection than the average U.S. consumer (62% compared to 76%).

"If you’re building a mobile app or service -- especially a social or entertainment-focused service," writes TechCrunch, "you would be lucky to have a group that’s as engaged as this one is to tap into."

You can find more on Nielsen's research here and more from eMarketer here.