As summarized in eMarketer, The Kelsey Group estimates that small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) will spend $22 billion on advertising this year, with 46% going to yellow pages advertising. A sizeable portion of SME media spending this year should go towards Web sites.

If your business is at all related to the world of personal computers, a recent Gartner Inc. release says that their analysts are increasing their projections for fourth quarter PC shipments. According to their recent forecasts, worldwide PC shipments will total 47.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2003, a 12.4 percent increase from the same period last year.

Almost everybody searches, eBay and Amazon reap the results, news and weather are important to some, but home and fashion gets the least attention in the last two weeks of October.

An upcoming Leichtman Research Group report, Broadband, Cable and DBS Across the US, based on information from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Media Business Corp. and others, found that Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut led the nation in residential penetration of high-speed Internet subscribers at the start 2003.

According to the Cambridge Consumer Credit Index report by Allen Grommet, Ph.D. Sr. Economist, nearly half (46%) of Americans said that someone in their household was making at least one monthly loan or lease payment on a car. When looking towards the next six months, 6% said they were very likely to make additional auto purchases with an additional 11% somewhat likely to buy or lease. It appears that there is still significant potential for continued auto sales and financing in coming months, despite robust sales in 2003.

According to the STORES Magazine 2003 Consumer Credit Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average consumer has at least two credit cards in his wallet; affluent consumers have several more. The majority of consumers carry VISA (64%), and nearly as many carry MasterCard (54%). Ranked third was the Discover Card (24%), and 11 percent hold American Express cards.

InStat/MDF reports that with the recent releases of third quarter 2003 cable TV operator financial statements, US-based cable operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Charter Communications are continuing to reduce spending on everything from consumer premise equipment such as set top boxes and cable modems, to infrastructure transmission equipment like head-ends and video servers.