The results of a new study presented in the Value of Connections infographic, released by Reachable, reveal that personal connections can increase the likelihood of salespeople receiving a call back five-fold and improve sales productivity by more than 240%.

According to the Q1 Global Video Index Report from Ooyala, Long-form content, videos longer than 10 minutes, accounted for half the total time people spent watching online video in Q1, and the growth trend is expected to continue.

According to a new study from MIT/Sloan and Deloitte, the 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project, social business matters. 52% of the survey believe that social business is important or somewhat important to their business today. Fully 86% of managers believe social business will be important or somewhat important in three years.

According to the IAB Europe study from Mediascope Europe, 426.9 million Europeans go online every week with 37% accessing the Internet using more than one device. 64% of people access the web via a computer, 415.7 million people, and 21% use the Internet on their mobile phone (139.2m)

According to the latest MAG research, 50% of respondents expressed interest in using their mobile phone to research buying or leasing a vehicle. When in the market to buy or lease a new vehicle, nearly half (47%) of consumers said that they would find mobile advertisements containing deals or offers most valuable to them

According to the Global Digital Out-of-Home Media Forecast 2012-2016, by PQMedia, total global DOOH revenues, generated by digital place-based networks, billboards and signage operators, increased 15.3% to $6.97 billion in 2011, driven by double-digit growth in both the APAC and Americas regions, the largest and fastest-growing DOOH regions. Expansion into new venues and markets, enhanced features, and mobile and social media tie-ins fueled double-digit growth in the global digital out-of-home industry in 2011, making it one of the fastest-growing and vibrant advertising media in the world.

According to a recent Wildfire analysis of over 10,000 social media campaigns to see what types of campaigns generated the most earned media, the most entered campaigns are not the campaigns that generate the most earned media, or sharing activity. Certain campaign application types generate higher entry and participation rates (contests and sweepstakes for example).

Purchase-based targeting for new product launches show that extremely small concentrations of shoppers make or break the success of new products. The odds improve dramatically when targeting buyers based on past purchasing behavior. Heavy category buyers, and even more so, top brand buyers in the case of product line extensions, are much more likely to be high-value buyers for new products.

The Marketing team at Balihoo recently concluded a study of marketing professionals at over 270 national brand companies to better understand the role of local marketing and ROI metrics in their overall strategy. Among survey respondents, 66% of national brands are investing in local marketing, over 20% are spending 25+% of their budgets on local marketing, and 58% don't use ROI as a local marketing metric.

According to Marketing Charts, and Nielsen's latest Cross-Platform Report, Black Americans are consistently the second-highest US consumers of mobile data services by ethnic demographic. And, they are highly active on the Internet and on their mobile devices, watching video, networking with their social connections, and making purchases.