While most people worldwide consider themselves to be happy, the percentage slipped six percentage points in 2019 from 2018, according to IPSOS' annual year-in-review of global consumer research trends.

Readers of Research Intelligencer apparently are most interested in themselves, or as the case may be, their peers. That appears to be the case based on an analysis of the top Research Intelligencer stories of 2019. Half the top 10 stories of the year were about media agencies and/or proprietary research they conducted. A couple of others were about innovative Nielsen research developments, including its first-ever cross-platform deduplication analysis, as well as its contrivance of the industry's longest acronym to date: the "OTA+vMVPD" audience segment.

Marketers still expect to use other media measurement tools like media-mix modeling, especially in tracking traditional media.

Black professionals working in the Midwest are most prone to experience prejudice at work, according to findings of "Being Black in Corporate America," an in-depth study of racism in corporate America released this month by the Center for Talent Innovation. The study, which was sponsored by Interpublic and other major corporations, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and found that Northeastern states were less likely by nearly half to represent a prejudiced corporate work space for Black professionals.

The percentage of advertisers in North America that had adopted MTA methods rose to 45% this year from 41% in 2018, according to a survey by the Mobile Marketing Association.

At presstime, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) estimated more than 1.3 billion Christmas gifts have already been delivered, albeit mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere where Santa was already being tracked making his rounds somewhere over China, en route to Australia.

TikTok's focus on spontaneous video entertainment helps to differentiate the platform from other social media platforms like Facebook, according to eMarketer.

While 14% of surveyed digital commerce leaders consider social commerce the most important sales channel currently, 20% expect it to be most dominant in 10 years, according to Wunderman Thompson Commerce.

Agency execs are somewhat more pessimistic about the direction of the ad and media services industry than their clients, according to findings of a study by Advertiser Perceptions for "Research Intelligencer." The findings show a majority of both groups believe the industry is "going through a difficult time," but a slightly higher percentage of agency respondents said they feel that way. Moreover, 3% of agency executives describe it as "going horribly wrong."

The so-called wearables market -- wearable devices such as smartwatches, headphones, and other accessories tethered to a smartphone, PC or other internet connected device -- now comprises about a fifth of the U.S. population, according to updated estimates released today by eMarketer.