Ray Schultz reports on a new survey of 3,000 adults from Vertis, conducted by telephone by Marshall Marketing and Communication, Pittsburgh, showing that only 3% of all consumers ranked direct mail as the medium most likely to influence their buying decisions in 2002. Mail was tied with radio for the bottom slot.

David Hallerman, reviewing online marketing, reports that when companies distribute coupons online, they can target delivery in ways that are impossible in the Sunday newspaper or on the side of a cereal box. For example, customers have to register before getting coupons from one of the Web sites that specialize in them, and they might even personalize the coupon incentive along with the finer targeting.

Ross Rubin, senior Analyst for eMarketer reports that the US has become a leading country in terms of both mobile phone subscribers and penetration. This high installed base is somewhat sabotaged by competing network standards, but overall the US represents a rich base for mobile commerce (m-commerce).

TSE Sports & Entertainment, in a national survey of 213 sports and marketing executives from across the country, showed that 57% of executives believe football is "the most successful sport to reach consumers", and 73% say "talk of a strike last year very much affected baseball's marketability."

Maybe it's not a bellweather, but it could be a harbinger of how US TV viewers might behave. Instead of adversely affecting newspaper readership habits, TV news seems to have left readers asking for more. In other words, the more news they see on TV, the greater is the tendency to pick up a newspaper, according to CMS' study on the "Appetizer effect of TV news on newspaper readership".

New research by Knowledge Networks indicates that conventional media, advisers, and financial services retain a powerful influence on how Boomers approach money management as the Baby Boom generation tries to nurture a retirement nest egg and awaits what for some will be an inheritance windfall.

Agencies serving the banking industry will be interested in the fact that new comScore research found that online bill payment users were more than twice as likely to remain active online banking customers compared to non-bill payment users. The comScore research transcends simple "unique visitor" metrics by quantifying actual, active usage of bill payment services. Online banking customers who did not use their bank's bill payment services showed an online attrition rate** of 34 percent, compared to only 16 percent for those who were active bill payment users.

Internet activity centered on the Treasury Department in the middle of April, as might be expected, with the Defense Department taking second place in the Nielsen//NetRatings stats for the week.

Total magazine advertising revenue for the month of March increased 11.6% compared to March of last year, closing at $1,593,908,286, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Ad pages for March totaled 21,561.0, up 9.1% from last year. Year-to-date, advertising revenue closed at $3,701,597,008, an increase of 10.3%, and ad pages were 49,729.3, up 5.3% from last year.

In February 2003, more than 1.2 million Hispanics - fully ten percent of the online Hispanic population - visited at least one automotive manufacturer Web site. Among these, Ford Motor Company attracted 355,000 unique visitors and General Motors drew 353,000 unique visitors. These results are in sharp contrast to the Total U.S. population, in which General Motors led with 5.7 million unique visitors and Ford held the number two ranking, with 4.2 million visitors.