A recent survey by Information Mapping, Inc. revealed that 80% of those surveyed deem email writing skills are 'extremely' or 'very' important to the effectiveness of doing their jobs. The results also showed that approximately 65% of the respondents spend from 1 to 3 hours per day reading and writing emails, with 40% "wasting" thirty minutes to three hours reading "ineffectively" written emails.

According to a new study by The Media Audit Hispanics are growing in importance to the automobile market and the after-market. Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, Inc, says that "Hispanics make up 15.5 percent of all adults in The Media Audit markets surveyed, but they make up 18.1 percent of all those who plan to buy a vehicle in the coming year. " Of the 137.5 million adults represented in the survey, 21.3 million are Hispanic adults.

The third annual NRF 2005 Back-to-College Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that college students and their parents will spend a whopping $34.4 billion returning to campus this year, up 33.8 percent from 2004 and more than double what parents of K-12 students will spend on back-to-school.

Nielsen//NetRatings reported that search sponsored links, led by eBay, Shopping.com Inc. and InterActiveCorp, comprised 34 percent, or nearly 13 billion, of online advertising impressions, according to its new AdRelevance Sponsored Search Link service. Rick Wainschel, vice president of marketing research, Kelley Blue Book, said "We... find the search term capabilities extremely helpful in providing in-depth insight into how key competitors have targeted top search terms, providing essential tools for our benchmarking."

Based on the RAB Radio Revenue Index of more than 150 markets, radio revenues dipped in July, with grand total combined spot and non-spot dollars dropping 2% over July of last year. Non-spot business was the only positive for the month, showing gains of 3% this July over last July.

Recently reported by B&C MultiChannel News, Texas has joined three other states as a majority-minority state, according to population estimates released Aug. 11 by the U.S. Census Bureau. The trend is driven by a surge in the number of Hispanics moving to the state. According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, Texas's minority population, as of July 1, was estimated at 11.3 million or 50.2% of the state's total population of 22.5 million. 7,781,211 of them are Hispanics.

According to data recently released by TNS Media Intelligence, total advertising expenditures for the first half of 2005 increased 4.5 percent, compared to the same period in 2004, to $70.5 billion. Steven Fredericks, President and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence, said "The first half ad expenditure numbers demonstrate sustained momentum from the first quarter of the year. The advertising market continues to outperform the general economy ..."

Scarborough Research recently released an analysis of spending patterns of consumers who have one or more school-age children in their household that finds that consumers in Des Moines, New York, and Boston are spending more money annually on average for children's clothing than consumers nationally. Des Moines adults with school-age children in their household who bought children's clothing during the past year spent on average $298 on these purchases. This is $36 more than the national average of $262

A deep drill-down into Online sports sites, demographics, advertisers and ad technology in the sports league and teams category.

A new survey report by Harte-Hanks, Inc. and CSO Insights, Inc., reveals that more than one in five organizations spend more than 45 percent of their entire marketing budgets on "target marketing," and an additional two in five spend between 15 percent and 45 percent on such activity. According to the 2005 Executive Report: Target Marketing Priorities Analysis, nearly three of four companies plan higher investments in database management this year; three in five companies are planning to spend more on e-mail, Web design and data quality initiatives; and more than one in two on search marketing.