Americans age 18-34, or "Generation C" as they've been recently dubbed, make up 23% of the US population but they comprise an outsized proportion of consumers who watch online video (27%), visit social networking sites and blogs (27%), own a tablet (33%), and use a smartphone (39%), according to a ... more

Local online and mobile advertising revenues are forecast to reach $38.5 billion by 2016, up from an estimated $21.2 billion in 2011, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7%, according to BIA/Kelsey's US Local Media Annual Forecast. more

With some 845 million monthly active users, Facebook is becoming a vibrant e-commerce platform for more than 100,000 small merchants who actively promote and sell products via Facebook storefronts, according to a study by Payvment. more

Americans still love couponing—now a 125-year-old tradition in the US: Fully 70% of surveyed women say saving money with coupons is as American as apple pie, according to a survey conducted by Valpak. Moreover, without a coupon in hand, 49% of women say, they would not buy dinner out; also, ... more

The use of social networks, particularly LinkedIn, among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise: 55% of surveyed tech professionals now use LinkedIn, up 18 percentage points, or 48.6%, from the 37% who did so a year earlier, according to a report by GlobalSpec. more

Senior executives have a healthy appetite for a wide range of traditional and new media channels, according to a survey from Doremus and the Financial Times: Most surveyed execs still read business and trade information in printed formats, but they also use digital channels—such as online video, professional networking sites, ... more

Big brands use jokes to market their products all the time. But, sadly, many small and medium-sized (SMB) marketers have lost their sense of humor. Why is that? Maybe SMB marketers sense they have too much to lose. But there's much to gain, too. more

As advertisers continue to shift spending from traditional print media to the Internet, newspapers are failing to make up for the decline in print advertising revenues via gains in online ad revenues, according to a report by Pew Research. more

Apple is expected to unveil the next-generation of the iPad on March 7, 2012 and nearly one-third (29%) of mobile Web users say they plan to buy the new device, according to a survey from InMobi. Among those 29%, more than one-half (54%) are first-time tablet buyers. more

Buoyed by renewed confidence in the US economy and higher expectations for new business, CMOs say they plan to boost marketing spending over the next 12 months, with B2B products and B2B services marketers leading the way, according to the CMO Survey. more

More than one-half (52%) of surveyed small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) say they use social media to promote their businesses, and 49% purchase online advertising (including SEM products) themselves, directly from websites, according to a new report by BIA/Kelsey. more

When measuring the success of online display advertising, agencies tend to place great importance on performance metrics such as conversion, even for branding awareness campaigns, according to a survey from Maxifier. more

Businesses that use primarily inbound marketing strategies for lead acquisition consistently report lower cost-per-lead (CPL) rates than those using outbound-centric strategies, according to the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report by HubSpot. more

The year 2011 was pivotal for the mobile industry, marked by a near doubling in smartphone ownership, consumers' growing appetite for mobile social content, and tablets emerging as a formidable fourth screen, according to a new report by comScore. more

You probably optimize the content at your website—but what about SEO for less formal interaction at blogs and social networks? "B2B marketers should be looking to expand the reach of their social media efforts to drive more traffic back to their websites (and their calls-to-action)," writes Jeffrey L. Cohen at the ... more

Total US mobile and social media revenues—including business and consumer content, access, and advertising and marketing—reached $45.38 billion in 2011, up 30.2% from a year earlier, according to new data from PQ Media. more

To say that marketing execution has changed dramatically over the last 10 years is about the grossest kind of understatement. Then why do all the models of the marketing function look about the same as they always have? more

Consumers use various digital devices—smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers—at many points along the purchase path, from researching product information and pricing to finding retail outlets or completing transactions electronically, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos for Google, which explores consumers' shopping behaviors during the 2011 holiday season. more

More than one-half (55%) of social media users in the US say they are uncomfortable sharing credit card information with a known brand via secure payment on a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook, according to a new survey from Digitas. more

Facebook ad spending among clients of Kenshoo Social grew 109% in the fourth quarter of 2011 over 3Q11 levels, dwarfing the 27% growth recorded in paid-search spending over the same period, according to a report by Kenshoo. more

Fully 40% of all US mobile subscribers, or 97.9 million people, owned a smartphone during the three months ended December 2011, as Google Android expanded its dominance in the market and Apple gained ground among handset manufacturers, according to data from the comScore MobiLens service. more

Super Bowl XLVI is only days away—and so is the debut of those iconic ads that run during the big game. Learn which industries led the way in ad spending last year, and which ad was named the best Super Bowl ad of all time by Forbes.com readers. more

Ad campaigns that target consumers on the basis of their social media activities and interest-based connections—or Brand Graph—perform better than ads without such targeting capabilities, and they generate large gains in brand lift and key direct-response metrics, according to a study by 33Across. more

In a post at the Renegade Search blog, Lindsay Atkinson ponders the clichéd adage that content is king. "I can't say that I'm a fan of using this relatively grating term, but I can definitely defend its power," she writes. "Having fresh and unique content is an increasingly important factor ... more

When searching for the best holiday deals, one-quarter (25%) of surveyed consumers say they prefer visiting brand websites over other channels such as print media (15%), email newsletters and notifications (13%), and Facebook (3%), according to a survey from Crowd Science. more