According to a new McAfee study, the 50+ demographic is spending more than five hours a day instilling confidence in their attitude toward technology. 88% of participants say they consider themselves equally or more tech-savvy compared to others their age.

According to Nielsen's 2013 Holiday Spending Forecast, retailers are already rolling out their holiday promotions, the day after Halloween. 22% of U.S. consumers report that they've already started their holiday shopping,

71.5% of broadcast and studio executives believe that over 11% of average audience viewing time will be delivered by web services by 2017. More than a quarter of all respondents (consumers) predict that over 30% of audience viewing time will be delivered by web services in 2017.

Of interest, if not importance, to all in media and marketing, is the Evolution of Insight from the 1890s 'til "the future," in a moving graphic by Vision Critical. Research as it began and progressed from the prediction and the election of President Woodrow Wilson to the future...

By 2017, 60% of all U.S. retail sales will involve the Internet either as a direct e-commerce transaction or as part of shopper's research on a laptop or mobile device. 10.3% of total retail sales in the U.S. in five years will be online purchases, or $370 billion in web sales compared to $3.6 trillion in total retail sales, says the report.

According to Nielsen's quarterly Global AdView Pulse report, TV kept its position as the front-running media format for advertising in the second quarter of 2013. Global TV ad expenditures grew 4.2% on a year-over-year basis for the first half of 2013, accounting for 57.6% of total ad spend.

Affluent Influencers, by having the financial means, attention and authority as well as broad access and reach, are valuable because they can support brands directly from their own buying decisions, and have the ability to influence others, delivering an exponentially larger total reach both in traditional, offline word-of-mouth, and in online/social space.

40% of mobile consumers who are in the market for a new product use their smartphones and/or tablets to research their purchases. The report says that It's not just retail show-rooming, as 60% of mobile consumers conduct research via mobile in their home.

Most U.S. adults do not go to Facebook seeking news, the online survey of 5,173 adults finds. Instead, 78% of Facebook news consumers get news when they are on Facebook for other reasons. Only 4% say it is the most important way they get news.

According to a survey involving retailers that Shop.org polled earlier this year about their holiday promotions and plans, 34.9% of respondents said they already offer free shipping all year, compared with 23.1% a year earlier. Of the rest of the retailers that do not offer free shipping all year, 16.3% said they would begin offering it as a holiday promotion this week (last week in October).