eMarketer released their latest eGlobal Report today, and based on data collected from more than 100 research organizations, worldwide Internet usage continues to grow. Online spending, however, has been adversely affected by today's uncertain economic climate. Especially Europe, which just six months ago was the Internet forerunner, is now strongly feeling the effects of a slowed worldwide economy. The eGlobal Report cites a number of indicators - from the US Census Department B2C revenue figures to the value of items sold on eBay - illustrating an overall slowdown in the growth of online shopping. "The B2C …

If you've been reading the online advertising press lately, you've probably seen a few dozen stories on the subject of "what doesn't work online." Namely, the pop-under format. In my opinion, it's too early to tell whether the pop-under format is effective or not - those who sell them say they're the hottest things going (naturally), yet those who see them online seem to hate them - so I'd rather talk about things that do work and have been working for a while. One of those is paid search engine placement. For example, Jupiter Media Metrix today released …

According to the latest report from Nielsen//NetRatings, more than one million surfers flooded IRS.gov from their office computers during the week ending July 22 for the latest information on recent tax relief legislation. IRS.gov took the top ranking as the fastest growing domain for the week. T.S. Kelly, director and principal analyst at NetRatings, said that a recent mass mailing alerted most Americans to the timing and amount of their refund, and many of those individuals then "flocked online to IRS.gov for further details. The latest increase in traffic to the government site is yet another indication that Americans are …

Despite a scarcity of websites in Spanish, the number of adult Hispanics online continues to grow in the U.S. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 50% of Hispanics 18 and older have used the Internet, which translates into 11 million people. For comparison, 58% of white adults and 43% of African-Americans have been online. The overall Hispanic population with Internet access is split evenly between men and women, but Pew found that more of the Hispanic newcomers are women than men. Two-thirds of the growth came from those under age 34 and, overall, 61% of Hispanic web …

If you've ever wanted to find out what kind of car your target audience is driving, you might want to check out the results of a recent partnership between R. L. Polk & Co. and Jupiter Media Metrix. The two companies announced today that they've launched the Polk-Media Metrix Automotive Internet Intelligence Report, which combines automotive statistical information from Polk with Internet usage and demographic data from JMM. The first report shows that among car sites, Autobytel.com has the highest composition of visitors owning a luxury car, while Buyerconnection.com has the highest composition of visitors owning a sport …

comScore Networks and Diameter have just released their Internet Traffic Report for June and it looks like the online population has taken advantage of the nice weather and, to quote Bing and Satchmo, Gone Fishin'. The report revealed that on a worldwide basis, total Internet traffic was down 1% to 296.5 million unique visitors in June versus 299.7 million unique visitors in May. In the U.S. traffic was down 3% to 128.4 million unique visitors in June versus 132.0 million unique visitors in May. netScore's Top 50 Property Report showed a slowing in total Internet traffic on a …

To mark its entrance into the race for web audience measurement domination, Plurimus Corporation today began offering its NetMetrics Standard report free of charge at their website - http://www.plurimus.com. Who said you can't get something for nothing? Like other online audience measurement products on the market today - namely Media Metrix and Nielsen//NetRatings - the NetMetrics Standard report ranks over 60,000 domains into the top 1,000 websites. Sites are ranked based on reach (how many visitors come to a specific site), frequency (how often they visit), and duration (how long those visitors stay each time they visit …

In the beginning, there was talk about the Internet having the potential to destroy print, but those fears are gone now. By now, every print magazine has an online counterpart and many advertisers are beginning to ask for cross-media advertising packages. Today's topic is an isolated and obviously self-serving research study, but I wanted to highlight the results because they could mean there will be even more online ad opps available to magazine advertisers in the near future. That's what I gather from a survey MediaMark Research Inc. (MRI) recently did for qMags.com - a company that provides …

By now, everyone has heard of the three branding studies released yesterday by the IAB, DoubleClick and MSN. I reported on the findings in yesterday's Minute, so if you missed it, please check out our archives. As you might expect, there is more to the story than just a bunch of numbers. Exciting as the findings are in terms of offering numeric proof that online branding actually does work, some jaded skeptics are already labeling the studies a desperate move to justify Internet advertising in the midst of a horrendous downturn. Some have also called the releases nothing …

Not that what I'm about to tell will bring an end to the debate of whether there is any value in online branding, but it might help. Warning: this might be a little longer than a minute (there are a lot of numbers I have to present), so stay with me. In a joint presentation of research studies, the IAB, DoubleClick and MSN today unveiled their individual studies on the effectiveness of branding on the Internet at a press conference in New York City. All three studies strongly reinforce the fact that online advertising can be effectively used for …