Men may not stop and ask, but according to a recent Hitwise study, 49.1 percent of visitors to mapping Web sites were male for the four-week period ending July 16, 2005. "Researching directions on the Web before a drive is a different context than asking for directions once you're on the road and lost," said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research, Hitwise.

According to the most recent report from the Radio Advertising Bureau, radio revenues remained steady as June numbers came in flat across most sectors of the industry. Grand total all revenue, local spot, national spot, and total combined local and national spot dollars all remained flat for the month compared to June of 2004. NTR figures dropped 5% this June over last June.

Drilling down in the apparel, beauty and jewelry online markets to look at sites, demographics, advertising types, sizes and technology.

Christopher Grosso, John McPherson, and Christiana Shi wrote about "What's Working Online" in a recent McKinsey Quarterly report. The McKinsey study found that direct retailers with physical stores captured 52 percent of Internet sales in 2003, while those without stores garnered just 31 percent. Online retailing, says the report, generated $90 billion in revenues for US retailers in 2004, compared with just $8 billion in 1998.

According to LRG's third annual study: "Cable & DBS: Competing for Customers 2005," rural areas nationwide now have more Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) subscribers than cable subscribers. DBS now accounts for over 25 million subscribers nationwide.

The International Federation of the Periodical Press, in their 2005 survey about successful consumer magazine websites, reports that 84% of sites wants to expand the publication's audience beyond the print audience base by creating a new online audience, and 81% of the sites wants to use the website to attract new readers for the printed magazine.

A new report, "Teens and Technology" by The Pew Internet & American Life Project, finds that the number of teenagers using the Internet has grown 24% in the past four years, and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online. In short, says the report, "the Internet and cell phones have become a central force that fuels the rhythm of daily life.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Q1 and Q2 search growth for the search engines AOL and Ask Jeeves rose 15 and 16 percent, respectively in the number of searches conducted. Google and Yahoo! maintained single digit growth. Overall, search as a category saw a five percent increase in the number of searches conducted from Q1 to Q2 during 2005.

According to the third annual AOL/Roper Hispanic Cyberstudy, U.S. Hispanics with Internet access at home are rapidly adopting broadband, with half of online Hispanics going online over high-speed connections at home. That's on par to the share of the general online population with broadband at home, and comes despite the fact that Hispanics are relatively newer to the Internet.

According to the recent Media Audit report, the business news sections of daily newspapers continue to consistently deliver an educated audience with economic clout. Collectively, in the 87 metro markets surveyed by The Media Audit, 26.2 percent or 36 million adults regularly read a daily newspaper business news section. The 87 markets have a population of more than 137 million.