According to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) in the first quarter of 2010, 85 magazines posted an increase in ad pages, compared to 15 magazines during the same period in 2009. One hundred and one magazines registered PIB revenue gains in Q1, versus 28 titles in the same period of last year. Ellen Oppenheim, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Magazine Publishers of America, said "The picture was brighter with an increase in major categories posting ad page and revenue growth, despite softness overall...

New consumer research from Leichtman Research Group found that 24% of all households have a television connected to the Internet. These connections vary from connecting through a video game system, a Blu-Ray player, or the TV set itself. While Internet connectivity has become a common built-in feature in many products, consumers are just beginning to use this feature to watch video from the Internet.

35% of Americans say that they have chosen not to purchase a certain brand because they find the ads distasteful and an additional 22% say they not done this, but have thought of doing so. 43% say they have never done this. 28% of Americans say they have chosen to not purchase a brand because they did not like the spokesperson it used.

According to The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), behaviorally-targeted advertising in 2009 secured an average of 2.68 times as much revenue per ad as non-targeted "run of network" advertising. The study also found that behaviorally-targeted advertising is more than twice as effective at converting users who click on the ads into buyers (6.8% conversion vs. 2.8% for run-of-network ads), and that behavioral advertising accounted for approximately 18% of advertising revenue.

According to the second year of an Opinion Research Corporation consumer preference survey sponsored by Adfusion, consumers are more likely to read and act upon online advertising than they were a year ago. For the second year, consumers say articles that include brand information is the type of online advertising they're most likely to read and act upon, compared to banner ads, pop-up ads, email offers or sponsored links.

According to new data from Javelin Strategy Research, in the past few years, card networks have changed their prepaid and gift focus as core, rather than emerging, products. The global economic downturn has furthered this paradigm shift, with pay?now and pay?before products gaining increasing prominence as credit markets have tightened. Nevertheless, in 2009, the combined use of prepaid and gift cards shows a 5 percentage point decline from 66% to 61% of consumers, reflecting a decrease of 11 million consumers. With unemployment up to 9.7% as the nation officially enters its third year of recession in 2010, U.S. consumers …

According to the BIA/Kelsey Investing In Radio Market Report, 2009 closed with $13.7 billion in revenues for radio from broadcast and online sources, a decline of -18.4% from 2008. The company predicts, though, that industry revenues will hit $13.9 billion this year, an increase of 1.5%. More importantly, says the report, it represents the start of 2 to 4% annual growth rate over the next few years, including a predicted 16.5% compound growth rate from web and other online revenues.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there were 159 million credit card holders in the United States in 2000, 173 million in 2006, and that number is projected to grow to 181 million Americans by 2010. However, revolving consumer credit, which mostly consists of credit card debt, fell 2.3% in January 2010. Retailer Daily reports that this drop may be seen as good news for credit card issuers, as it moderated a trend of severe revolving credit declines that included drops of 12.9%, 18.5% and 13.3% in the three preceding months.

According to the latest quarterly report from WebVisible, the average small business advertiser spent $2,149 on search advertising in Q4 2009, an increase of 30% over Q3 2009 and 111% over Q4 2008. Video capability was the fastest-growing website feature for small business advertisers over the past year, with 19% of advertisers showing video on their websites in Q4 2009, versus just 5% in Q4 2008. The data represents nearly $22 million in U.S. small business advertisers spending in Q4 2009 from more than 12,000 individual advertisers.

According to a new survey called "The Case of Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines," by Josh Gordon, founder of Smarter Media Sales, digital magazines compare favorably to other electronic media when it comes to advertising and reader experiences. The survey shows that 70% of the readers of the digital editions that participated in the study were less likely to ignore display ads in digital editions than on Web sites. On average, cites the report, interactive magazines are viewed for 20 to 30 minutes while the average Web site visit is eight to nine minutes