Jonathan Carson, President, International, Nielsen Online
Jonathan Carson serves as President, International of Nielsen Online, the world's largest online market research company, and a business unit of The Nielsen Company. In this capacity, Jonathan manages Nielsen Online's operations in fifteen international markets, including the NetRatings and BuzzMetrics service lines.
Jonathan co-founded BuzzMetrics in 1999, and served as Chief Executive Officer until Nielsen acquired the business in 2007. In those years, Jonathan organically grew BuzzMetrics from a two-person start-up to a 150 person market leader. He led the company through an industry consolidation between BuzzMetrics, Trendum and Intelliseek, and through multiple investments and then a full acquisition by The Nielsen Company. At the time of the Nielsen acquisition, BuzzMetrics had almost 200 Fortune 1000 clients, including 19 of the top 20 U.S. advertisers.
Through this process, Jonathan helped to “create" the fields of consumer-generated media and word of mouth marketing. In 2005, he co-founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), which has since become a thriving trade association.
Jonathan is a frequent speaker on online marketing issues. He has given keynote and general session presentations at events including ESOMAR, ARF, IAB, Dow Jones, The Conference Board and WOMMA, and has spoken on dozens of industry panels. Jonathan has been interviewed by leading media outlets, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Fortune, NPR, Fast Company, WIRED, and MTV. Jonathan co-authored a chapter about the effect of the Internet on corporate governance for a Euromoney/Institutional Investor textbook with Jim Felton, the Central Michigan University finance professor whose Journal of Finance paper proved that the Enron scandal was first leaked on the Yahoo stock message boards,.
Previously, Jonathan founded and served as President of Intercities, Inc., an interactive development firm, with clients including Intel, Disney, and National Institutes of Health. Jonathan also co-founded Outer Sound in 1995, an award-winning music Web site that he successfully sold to Sharpflat, Inc., a music industry application service provider. Jonathan previously worked for the Georgetown University Center for Business-Government Relations, as the lead researcher on numerous projects including a two-year project to develop a new loan loss reserve model for the World Bank, and the first in-depth financial modeling for the Polish stock market.
Jonathan graduated cum laude from Georgetown University.
