A Resounding Echo In five years, some 25 million U.S. teenagers will be roaming malls, downtowns, and Web sites. According to Teenage Research Unlimited, teens now spend an average of $100 a week, and last year they spent a total of $153 billion -- a number that's been growing at 6% a year. Last week we presented a Brief describing some basic demographic characteristics of four generations of consumers. One of our readers suggested the "echo boom" subset had been given short shrift, so here it is (with a slightly different slant on the teen background recently reported). …

Take Care Harris Interactive, in a recent news release, announced Best-In-Class e-Health Websites as reported in the Harris Interactive Health Care News, Issue 4. This most recent survey, using a sample of over 100,000 people who go online for health and medical information, was conducted between August and October 2000. In total,159 health sites were rated. This direction should be particularly helpful to Internet advertisers seeking to reach specific health-related markets. Rated on Quality of information, Visuals & graphics, Links to other sites, Ease of navigation, Relevant information, Complete information, Easy to understand , Security of personal information, …

Young and Savvy Older Folks In a recent press release by NetValue they reported on a new study, "Retired and Wired" indicating that the online population of retirees jumped by more than 28.1% in December to a total of 8.6 million unique visitors. This surge has the online retired population now representing 10.2% of the overall Internet population. And, according to NetValue President Jim Hatch, of the 63.3% male retirees who connected, 7.5% are under the age of 49. Retired no longer means 65 years of age and older. In addition, in December, they spent more time on …

Ad Price Increases or New Markets? The Newspaper industry is headed for a blind curve, says Felicity Barringer, writer for the New York Times in an article released on January 29th. She goes on to point out that the early signs in January reflect a lingering weakness in many markets John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America, said that there had been welcome surprises in the fourth quarter, including unexpected auto company advertising. But, he said, one of his colleagues wondered ruefully if that spending was "the storm before the calm." Fueled by a slowdown …

Spread It Out In a recent article in E-Commerce Times, Paul Greenberg made several suggestions to marketers for weathering the shaky internet advertising viability storm. He points out that when times are good, there's a whole lot of clicking going on. When times are tough online advertisers sometimes begin to question the viability of the medium, but everyone involved, including investors, underwriters and analysts, is going to have to give online advertising time to grow up. Struggling advertisers will argue they have no choice but to cut ad spending. Those same companies, however, need to determine if their …

Print Circulation Peaking? An article written by Bob Moseley in Folio:, released by zdnet, reports that national advertising in all media will rise by 6.3% in 2001, compared to a projected 11.8% in 2000, according to one forecast by Robert Coen of Universal McCann. 91% of publishers say the advertising outlook is an indicator they rely on most often when planning for the coming year, while 70% named their competition. Most expect the flood of advertising seen in 2000 to dry up a bit. The major issue facing the publishing industry in 2001, according to a Folio: commissioned survey, is …

Sites to Cite Walmart.com increased online advertising, from 37 million impressions in November 2000 to 178 million in December to gain seven million unique visitors and enter the Top 50 web sites for the first time at number 41 according to a recent release from Media Metrix. And, winter storm watchers flocked to the Weatherchannel.com Additional highlights from the Media Metrix December 2000 Top 50 include E-greetings Network with a 35 % increase, eToys Sites with 16 %, Barnes & Noble with a 12 % increase, and The AOL proprietary shopping channel with an 8 % increase. The …

Target Teens on Their Own Surf A recent Jupiter Consumer Survey, available in PDF format, revealed that teen (12-17) online activities are similar to the overall online population, and don’t differ a great deal between boys and girls, but marketing is sure to sway girls, and boys will be wooed by programming. The key findings show that traditional brands and online networks rule with teen girls, while teen boys are largely technophiles, interested in game playing. Girls favor known brands for magazines and shopping, and are loyal to online communities in which they become involved; boys are more …

Peer Pressure! It's a hot buzzword on the marketing scene, but most marketers think Viral Marketing is an art, not a science. In a attempt to measure attitudes and develop some quantitative criteria for adding Viral Marketing to the strategic mix, IMT Strategies recently completed an Internet survey on the subject, and many of our readers participated in responding to the questionnaire. The results are in, and the complete report is available to you here. The company says "the core value of this report is that it provides fundamental design points necessary to begin to understand …

Illusive Assumptions Many of our readers have asked for clarifications of reported estimates when similar markets seem to be forecasted differently. Our staff is currently developing a report on traditional media, but a recently released analysis of e-commerce estimates by Steve Butler of e-Marketer, points out the variableness of forecasts and explains some of the differences. Here’s some highlights of his report: The underlying economic models that different research firms use have a great deal to do with their estimates for the dollar-value of e-commerce. Most research firms base their models upon US Economic Census data from 1997 …