Jim Hopkins, writing in USA TODAY, says a study by the Center for Women's Business Research shows that the number of companies owned 50% or more by women last year jumped 11% from 1997, to 10.1 million, nearly twice the growth rate of all companies. About one of every 10 U.S. adults is a business owner, the center says. Though it did not calculate a separate rate for men, "that figure likely is higher than the rate for women," executive director Sharon Hadary says.

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."

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).

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.

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.

LAUNCH, the music destination on Yahoo! ranked as the number one Internet Broadcast Network with 3,040,830 hours of Total Time Spent Listening (TTSL) for the week of April 14, according to Arbitron's Internet Broadcast Ratings. Live365 was ranked the number two Internet Broadcast Network with 2,847,013 hours of TTSL, the sum total of hours tuned by listeners to a given station or network. Chaincast/StreamAudio was ranked number three with 1,474,969 hours of TTSL.

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.

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.

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.

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.