In a recent release, approximately 70 percent of 10,000 consumers surveyed through FinSightsm, the RR Donnelley financial services consumer panel, "think companies have too much personal information." A slightly higher percentage, 76.4 percent, "feel that their privacy has been compromised if a company uses their personal information to sell them products." Yet, consumers are more willing to give a company personal information if they get something, like a personalized product or service offer, in return.

The Ipsos National Consumer Attitudes and Spending by Household (CASH) Index continued to hold steady in early August, continuing a 2-month stabilizing trend. However, consumers are more optimistic than pessimistic on the state of the economy and their personal finances six months from now. The recent release includes the response to questions regarding prospects for personal finances and the local economy six months from now.

A recent release from the Direct Marketing Association, citing their Quarterly Business Review (QBR) for the second quarter of 2003, says there are two very different experiences for direct and interactive marketers:

• those whose businesses continued to be impacted by a lack of recovery and the war in Iraq,
• and those who, despite everything, managed to post significant gains over last year.

As reported by eMarketer, the Zelos Group projects that the transmission of photos from mobile devices will rise in popularity over the coming years, generating $10 million in revenues in the US this year and a whopping $438 million in 2008. Zelos also projects that by 2008, one-third of mobile phone owners in the US will have camera phones.

In spite of rising gasoline prices, consumers are still interested in automobiles and how to get there. And apparently eBay is not just old furniture!

According to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper advertising expenditures for the second quarter of 2003 totaled $11.1 billion, an increase of 1.6 percent over the same period last year. Overall, the results are good news for newspapers heading into the second half of 2003.

According to Arbitron Internet Broadcast Ratings MUSICMATCH was ranked the top non-commercial Internet Broadcast Network with 7,224,323 hours of Total Time Spent Listening for the month of July. Radio@AOL Network and LAUNCH were the top ranked commercial Internet broadcasters with 26,211,800 and 10,285,403 hours of TTSL, respectively. The Adsertion Network was the top sales network with 5,170,467 hours of TTSL. The top Content Delivery Networks (CDN) were Live365 with 10,212,666 TTSL and StreamGuys with 2,287,024 hours of TTSL.

Masha Geller, in her Just an Online Minute... for MediaPost last week, featured the importance of the Teen shopper on retail apparel. Here's more of the supporting documentation on brands and sites for those serving this market. Week on the Web, by comScore Media Metrix, released data this week that in July, more than 34 million Americans visited a site in the Apparel category, up 12 percent from June.

Total magazine advertising revenue for the month of July increased 7.9% compared to July of last year, closing at $1,168,246,826 according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Ad pages for July totaled 14,696.2, down 0.2% from last year. Year-to-date, advertising revenue closed at $9,757,304,920, an increase of 9.6%, and ad pages were 123,877.5, up 1.6% from last year.

At the recent List Vision conference in New York sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, Peter Francese demographics trends analyst at Ogilvy & Mather, and the founder of American Demographics magazine, recognized the consumer shifts in age, education and lifestyle. Kris Oser, Online Content Editor for DMA, reported on some of the emerging statistics, and Mr. Franchese's thoughts.