Asked which, if any, brands had a positive impact for them during the pandemic, "other" was the No. 1 choice among 1,000 Americans responding to a recent survey by OpinionWay for digital communications agency JIN. Overall 73% cited at least one brand, and 17 charted above had enough statistical significance to be recognized by at least 1% of the respondent base. On this scale, albeit a highly fragmented one, ecommerce platforms Amazon and Walmart stand out as tentpoles, with 6% each of respondents.

These unique data visualizations were created by Chicago-based digital shop Digital Third Coast based on the agency's analysis of Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to see how the homepages of major news sites covered the coronavirus outbreak over time. The visualizations show the progression over 10 weeks -- from Jan. 1 to March 9 -- including the density of headline mentions (above) and total headlines appearing above the fold (below).

A plurality of Americans -- especially NFL fans -- support more players taking a knee in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement during NFL games. That's one of the findings of a national survey conducted by DeVries Global and Dynata in the wake of George Floyd's death and the Black Lives Matter protests nationwide.

Nature and educational-oriented cable networks including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, History Channel, and National Geographic Channel are the highest-ranked in terms of interest among non-cable subscribers, according to the latest edition of Beta Research Corp.'s "Cable Network Interest Study." The study, which samples a representative base of both subscribers and non-subscribers of cable TV services, also found that similar network interest among non-cable subscribers who are also heavy users of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Prime.

"Uncertainty is the new normal, along with fear, anxiety, and stress," reads a just-released white paper written for media buyers trying to figure out how to navigate this year's network upfront advertising marketplace. While those terms could well be applied to upfronts of year's past, their context is different in the midst of a pandemic that has disrupted much of the media marketplace, as well as advertiser budgets and plans.

While many media, and especially digital commerce-based media experiences, are known to have so-called "cohort" effects in which someone helps users navigate and/or decide on what to consider or buy, the phenomenon is even more complex inside U.S. Hispanic households where language plays an important role.

The safest form of media to for brands to utilize during a pandemic are shelter-in-place lifestyle content, according to survey of ad executives conducted in late May by Advertiser Perceptions. The survey, the fifth in a series of COVID-19 related tracking studies, also ranked podcasts, local TV news, social media (with comments disabled), national TV news, and online news (with comments disabled) very or reasonably safe

The COVID-19 pandemic drove U.S. consumption of online video views up 53% and time spent viewing them by 319%, according to the just-released Q1 2020 edition of Brightcove's Global Video Index. Globally, enterprise video consumption soared 97% in views, 35% in time spent, and 135% on time spent watching on connected TVs.

The stay-at-home restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic have been a boon for many media, but for video games this accelerated a rise in share of time spent with media that was already well underway, according to a new report from the equity research team at UBS. "Before COVID-19, we had observed continued momentum for video games; however, with "shelter-in-place" restrictions, we have seen video game consumption accelerate,"writes UBS analyst Eric Sheridan in a report sent to investors Sunday.

Using their media and communications platforms to encourage people to vote is the No. 1 way Americans would like to see brands respond to the "Black Lives Matter" groundswell following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers arresting him. That's the finding of a nationally representative survey conducted by Devries Global via Dyanta on June 2.