A deep look at the Internet destinations, advertisers and ad types for the Education, Career and Employment segments.

A newly released report, by the JWT Mature Market Group and ThirdAge, Inc. (an online survey of 1,680 adults 40+ years of age who currently work full- or part-time for pay), finds that personal fulfillment across all demographic groups is a very important factor in the decision to work in retirement. The report says that Baby Boomers and Aging Mid-lifers are working for more than pay. The new definition, now, of fully retired, does not mean not working.

A new study by Global Advertising Strategies focuses on unbanked immigrants and ethnic minorities, whose spending on financial products and services will increase by 94 percent in next 4 years. The report indicates that the unbanked are typically immigrants, ethnic minorities, the youth, widows, divorcées without credit histories in their own names, and people who have filed for bankruptcy and are re-building their credit-worthiness. This group of "unbanked" Americans comprises more than 13 percent of the 105 million households in the United States.

The latest Arbitron/Edison Media Research Study examines American consumers who are increasingly using different forms of audio and video on their own terms; a phenomenon called "On-Demand Media Consumers." Many of the on-demand media behaviors and devices allow consumers to change or even limit the commercial messaging they normally receive through television, radio and the Internet.

A new survey of e-retailers by opt-in subscribers of IRNewsLink, the Internet Retailer newsletter, shows that 71% of online merchants attribute less than 10% of their retail web sales to the e-mail marketing they do. Jack Love writes a summary of the findings, explaining that promotional e-mails must rise above an ever growing amount of spam to get noticed. He says that 68% of e-retailers are stepping up their e-mail marketing this year for two related reasons: their retail web businesses and Internet customer bases are growing and e-mail offers perhaps the best means for communicating with online shoppers.

Nielsen//NetRatings released the first Internet retail report card today from the MegaView Online Retail service that highlights the top 10 online retailers ranked by sales conversion rates, and top 15 product categories ranked by average order size during February 2005. The report found that among the top 10 online retailers ranked by conversion rates in February 2005, only Coldwater Creek has a significant brick-and-mortar presence.

According to the most recent poll of 8,500 adults from BIGresearch and Artafact LLC, there is an increasing awareness of RFID. The response to the poll shows that two out of five respondents know of RFID in 2005.

According to projections in a recently released report titled The State of the Nation's Housing 2004, from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, University Hispanics will account for one-third of the growth in the number of U.S. homeowners by the year 2020.

comScore Networks released key findings from a study focused on the opinions, attitudes and observed behaviors of visitors to online pharmacies. The study revealed that despite safety concerns, a significant percentage of visitors to online pharmacies believe the sites provide an affordable and appealing alternative to traditional methods of buying prescription drugs.

According to Hitwise, searches for several key terms related to gas prices increased 300 percent or more for the week ending March 26, 2005 versus four weeks earlier. Terms with significant increases in searches included: "electric cars" up 2,900 percent; "gas prices" up 559 percent; "fuel economy" up 333 percent and "gas mileage" up 300 percent.