According to the Discover Small Business Watch, reports the DMA, economic confidence among small business owners continued to fall in October as many expressed increased pessimism about both the future of their own businesses and the US economy in general.

The Nielsen Company reported that television tuning during the 2006-2007 television year (9/18/06-9/23/07) remained at the record levels set the previous year, while the number of homes with Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) more than doubled.

According to NRF's 2007 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, shoppers still plan to spend more on the holidays this year than last, but consumers say their spending will be a bit restrained this holiday season. The NRF forecast for the upcoming 2007 holiday season, predicts that sales will rise 4.0 percent this year to $474.5 billion.

According to New Study by TWI Surveys, Inc. on Behalf of Society for New Communications Research, social media and conversational marketing will outpace that of traditional marketing by 2012. Nearly 57% of respondents report that in 5 years time, what they spend on conversational marketing will be greater than that of traditional marketing, while another 24% believed it would be the same as traditional marketing. Significantly, 81% of marketers believe that in 5 years they'll be spending as much or more on conversational marketing vs. traditional marketing.

A newly released 88-Market national report from The Media Audit, analyzing automobile ownership by brand, reveals that 38% of U.S. adults own domestic-only brands, compared to 25.4% of U.S. adults who own foreign-only brands.

According to the Cinema Advertising Council's just-released report, cinema advertising industry revenues among CAC members grew 15% to $455.7 million in 2006. CAC members account for more than 81% of US movie screens, according to the organization.

According to a new Forrester Research report released at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 in Chicago, interactive marketing spending in the US will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012. The growth in interactive marketing spending represents a 27 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, and interactive marketing, 8 percent of all ad spending, will grow to 18 percent of total ad budgets in five years.

A new guide from Magazine Publishers of America announced by Ellen Oppenheim, Executive Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer, MPA, aggregates new findings from marketing research and consulting companies Marketing Evolution and Dynamic Logic, along with the latest research from other third-party sources, to offer a comprehensive view of the role of media in influencing consumer purchase decisions and online behavior.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, in association with the Games Committee, has introduced the first in a series of papers that outlines a detailed overview of the various game platforms, primarily "console" and "personal computer (PC) online." Subsequent reports are expected to address audience demographics, behavior, and best practices.

A recent comScore study shows that heavy U.S. visitors to social networking sites (the top 20 percent of visitors based on time spent on social networking sites) are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-oriented retail site categories. More than 95 percent of heavy social networkers visited retail sites in August, compared to 80 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience. These heavy social networkers exhibited a particularly high tendency to visit the more leisure-oriented retail categories, including those featuring entertainment, fashion, and retail technology.