According to the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker, the first in a monthly series of reports about consumers' views, 60% of respondents who participated in the study said they intend to spend about the same or more in the next 30 days, (compared to the last 30 days), 40% plan to spend less. Among the respondents who said they would spend less in the next 30 days, the top three reasons were "trying to save money," "reducing debt," and that they "have the money but feel now is not the time to spend."

According to Pew Research surveys, the public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media's performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate.

According to a recent Compete Smartphone Intelligence survey, with insights into how consumers are using their iPhones and other "smart" devices, smartphone owners agree on their favorite types of applications; entertainment, games, music, social networking and weather are the most popular across platforms. The survey data shows that smartphone owners prefer personal and social apps to business applications and are relatively open to targeted ads. iPhone owners, more so than other smartphone users, were more likely to spend money on apps., while 83% of all smartphone users preferred apps $5 or below.

According to data recently released by TNS Media Intelligence, total measured advertising expenditures in the first six months of 2009 fell 14.3% versus a year ago, to $60.87 billion,. Ad spending during the second quarter of 2009 was off 13.9% compared to last year, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines. Jon Swallen, SVP Research at TNS Media Intelligence, notes that "...the market has been steadily tracking at around 14% declines for several consecutive months... (but) early data from third quarter hint at possible improvements for some media due to easy comparisons against distressed levels of year ago expenditures..."

According to the first annual Community and Social Media Study, from the The e-tailing group, five out of ten social media tools have been adopted by more than 50% percent of brands and retailers, with the Facebook Fan Page leading the way at 86%. In addition, the study found three-fourths of the survey respondents feel brands have accelerated their use of, and commitment to, community and social media in the past six months.

According to the results of research exploring mobile Internet engagement levels among smartphone owners, as compared to owners of other devices, InsightExpress found that 68% of smartphone users reported feeling positively engaged (enjoyment in activity) while using the mobile Internet, second only to the 70% of users who were positively engaged while on a computer. Alternately, only 47% of feature phone users reported positive mobile site engagement.

According to a survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), 82% of marketers report that their companies regularly conduct formal agency performance evaluations. The establishment of a formal evaluation program is near-universal among firms with annual revenues of $5 billion or more (92% versus only 74% of smaller firms). As a corollary, formal evaluation programs are more common among firms with marketing/advertising budgets of $50 million or more, than among those with smaller budgets (96% versus 71%).

According to a survey conducted for the American Press Institute, reported in Media Buyer/Planner, more than half of newspaper publishers believe readers will pay to access online newspaper content. 51% of publishers say they believe they can successfully charge for content, while 49% either aren't sure or believe paying for content will not work.

According to a blog from Ethnic Technologies, prepared by Candace M. Kennedy, Sales and Marketing Director, describing the booming US Hispanic market, Hispanics love to buy and almost always buy in cash. The writer quotes the Wells Fargo Bank as reporting that their (Hispanic) clients feel that " ... being in debt is not honorable, and no one wants to have a bad name."

According to the 2009 Promo Premiums and Incentives survey from Promo Magazine, 38.6% of the companies polled in this year's survey said they offer a promotional incentive program to customers or sales prospects, down slightly from the 42.1% who ran such programs last year.