The value of China's art market, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, has more than doubled since 2009, making China the world's second-largest art market, behind the United States.

Measuring the affluent customer and the view of the affluent customer have been rocked to the core by the Ipsos-Mendelsohn report released a few weeks ago. It is a well-researched and documented project and when we say that it has rocked this market, it is in the positive sense of the word.

This week, we had the pleasure of unveiling our annual survey, our 35th year of tracking the lives, lifestyles, media habits and spending patterns of Affluent Americans.

In the movie "Gentleman Prefer Blondes," Marilyn Monroe made the song, "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" a classic. In the song, she exclaims, "Tiffany's! ... Cartier! ... Black Starr ... Frost-Gorham, talk to me, Harry Winston, tell me all about it!"

One-fifth of U.S. households, 24 million to be exact, holds approximately 60% of total U.S. household wealth and 70% of total U.S. consumer wealth. Defined by Ipsos Mendelsohn as the "affluents," these 24 million households have an annualized income of $100,000 or more. This group is two times more likely to buy consumer products and services and when they do, they spend over three times as much as their less economically fortunate counterparts.

It's said that bad news comes in threes. If you're marketing to affluent consumers, this old saw holds true. Unity Marketing, Ispos-Mendlesohn, and Bank of America have all checked in recently with data that show affluent consumers are as uneasy about the economic future as any other consumer segment. It's hardly time to pull back on affluent marketing, but it is time to adjust the message.

Conducted in the midst of the debt ceiling negotiations, we found that only 34% of Affluents were optimistic about the U.S. economy going forward, down from 49% just two months ago, and down substantially from the most recent high of 57% in December 2010 (when it was buoyed by the bipartisan agreement to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits). Even more telling, it is the lowest in the two-and-half-year history of our Affluent Barometer, and by extension the two years since the recession "officially" ended.

I'm predicting that 2012 will be The Year of the (Men's) Watch as I find women's watches to be a little "sissy" and look forward to seeing the tsunami of new styles that will be launched in the coming months.

The real power comes when a digital marketing property can index its audience compared not only to the average customer, but to the affluent customer.

Last month -- June 2011 -- marked the second anniversary of the end of the Great Recession, at least as "officially" declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized arbiter of such economic issues.