You might have guessed that the number of affluent Americans shopping online was high, but probably notthishigh: 95 percent of affluent Americans have made an online purchase in the last year, according to a Time online poll, featured in the most recent Time Style and Design issue. Clothing, accessories and books were the most popular items purchased; 68 percent of respondents made such purchases in the last year. Schulman Ronca & Bucuvalas conducted the Internet poll, interviewing 603 respondents aged18 and over with a household income of at least $150,000.     …

Legal precedent sides with Craigslist in its lawsuit with a fair housing group in Chicago, says The New York Times. The housing group claims the online classifieds provider violates the federal Fair Housing Act by allowing posts like "African Americans tend to clash with me" on its Web site. The precedent for court cases dealing with defamatory statements and public free speech on the Internet have almost universally sided with the companies that publish what others say. Due to the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the Internet is open season all the time for consumers to say exactly what they …

MarketingSherpa conducted a roundtable with a group of prominent search marketers, discussing industry trends, common mistakes, pay per call, and, of course, click fraud. One of the most common mistakes search marketers make is driving consumers to pages that haven't been customized for search, said Crispin Sheridan of SAP Global Direct Marketing. This can be a waste of a lead, he said, as contextual relevance is crucial to driving conversions. George Carrick of Jingle Networks/FREE411 added that too many marketers lose sight of the fact that ROI is more important than winning top billing for every search term. Maintaining the …

It's not just Yahoo. Content impresarios from Steven Spielberg to Ashton Kutcher and Mark Burnett have all tried and failed at the online content game, says the L.A. Times. Perhaps even more tricky than developing a hit on the Web is knowing what defines one, one Microsoft executive says. "There are as many answers to that question as people you ask it to." The confusion surrounding the online content game became increasingly apparent yesterday, as Yahoo announced in a New York Times piece that it will be drastically scaling back efforts to produce original entertainment. It seems like everyone is …

Mobile network operators, ad agencies and media companies are expecting big things from mobile marketing, a segment of the new media world that should become mainstream "quickly," according to Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the world's No.2 advertising company, WPP Group. Media companies like Tom Freston's Viacom are eyeing the mobilesphere as the next place to buy and sell video ads. "There's no question advertisers are interested," Freston said at a Reuters media summit this week. Mobile providers certainly agree. Sprint Nextel Corp. says it plans to offer subsidized wireless videos and local ads to cell phones. However, a …

We all know media fragmentation makes it harder than ever to reach today's over-media-extended consumers. For the marketing community, this means--sadly--they have to work harder than their predecessors in the pre-online days, because fragmentation means fragmented media plans, which means mass media is dying. These days, you've got at least four or five different Internet channels to consider, mobile phones and other portable devices, even video games, not to mention traditional media. Not only do advertisers have to reach different consumers in their specialized little worlds, but they also have to reach more markets, including fast-growing countries like China, India …

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) yesterday unveiled a bill that would ban telephone companies from charging Web businesses for guaranteed faster delivery of content over their phone lines. The so-called Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 would prohibit network operators from favoring content, which the bill says would "have a chilling effect on small mom and pop businesses that can't afford the priority lane, leaving these smaller businesses no hope of competing against the Wal-Marts of the world." Senator Wyden says neutrality in technology "allows folks to start small and dream big." His bill would prohibit network operators from interfering with, blocking, …

They've said it before and now they're saying it again: within the next six months, Microsoft claims "we'll be more relevant than Google." So said Microsoft's Neil Holloway, president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at a Reuters conference this week, and he's talking specifically about search. The last time Microsoft trumpeted about besting Google at its own game was about a year and a half ago, when the company unveiled an independent MSN Search; of course, the software giant lost badly, as Google currently commands a domineering 50 percent share of search volume, compared with MSN Search's 12 …

Illegal downloads of television shows over peer-to-peer file sharing networks are "a serious problem," says Fox Digital Media President Peter Levinsohn. One of the biggest problems is that some consumers don't even know this is illegal. As one unassuming consumer tells the L.A. Times, "It's TV isn't it? It would probably be different if it was a movie. If it is free on everybody's TV, why worry about it?" TV shows represent the fastest growing type of files downloaded online, and piracy, as anyone who downloads content illegally will attest, has never been easier. BitTorrent is the software that makes …

Viacom, owner of MTV Networks, is entering the social networking business, Company CEO Tom Freston announced at a Reuters media summit yesterday. Viacom is under increasing pressure from the likes of News Corp., which has taken the lead in the race to stay relevant to today's fickle consumers through the strategic acquisition of MySpace and IGN. Far from believing the race is over, Freston said the era of social networking has "just started." Within the year, Freston said Viacom will have some sort of presence in the social networking sphere, although it's unclear whether the company will do this through …