Dr Joe's Printing Industry Blog

Arbitron has a free report about Internet and media use: highly recommended
http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/im2006study.pdf
Selected highlights:

• There was a sharp increase in the number of heavy on-demand media consumers compared
  with 2005 (from 11% to 21%).
• Consumers find cell phones and broadband Internet access the most “life-changing” new technologies.
• The user base of MP3 player owners is growing rapidly (almost doubled).
• Households with broadband Internet access now significantly outnumber those with dial-up.
• Thirteen percent of respondents have three or more working computers in their homes.
  The number of respondents having ever made an online purchase has grown fourfold since 1999.
• The weekly Internet radio and video audiences have each increased 50% over the last year.
• Given a choice between never using the Internet or never watching TV, four in 10 would choose to keep the Internet and eliminate television.

The article "The End of Lazy Marketing" is where I found the Arbitron link. The article gives a perspective of the kinds of media decisions marketers are facing today. The use of the word "lazy" is quite good. Was print the old "lazy" choice?
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623635

Short article with some interesting data about the B2B marketing mix and the influence of direct marketing.... and some discussion about how no one can really define direct marketing
http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=29487

B2B now ordering 40% online? According to Abacus, a division of DoubleClick, it is. No wonder B2B space advertising has suffered...... once people realize that the Internet is just a fad, it will all go away.
Story http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=29476
Also significant is the report's finding that b-to-b customers make online purchases nearly 10% more than b-to-c customers, with 40% of 2005 b-to-b sales occurring over the Web, compared with 31% of consumer purchases. Abacus' report said the statistics highlight what most marketers already know: "Business purchases exhibit a different dynamic than consumer purchases."
Press release
http://www.abacus-us.com/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/default.asp?p=115
Download the executive summary http://www.abacus-us.com/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/The_Abacus_2006_B-to-B_Industry_Insights_Report_Executive_Summary.pdf

Insights into selling multichannel campaigns
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=112347

Great commentary in Advertising Age by Steve Rubel, "You Might as Well Be Searching for Bigfoot:
In Other Words, the Truth About 'Engagement' Is It's a Myth"
http://adage.com/article?article_id=112346
Engagement is, quite frankly, hot air. It's indicative of a systemic issue in the marketing community. We love to create buzzwords to describe new marketing methods when the good ol' outdated ones like blunt interruption don't quite work anymore.

European web use now passes newspapers. Study was by Jupiter.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/eb9509dc-5700-11db-9110-0000779e2340,_i_email=y.html
The time European consumers spend online has, for the first time, overtaken the hours they devote to newspapers and magazines, a study revealed. But the growth of new media is expanding total media consumption rather than simply cannibalising print and television. Print consumption has re-mained static at three hours a week in the past two years, as time spent online has doubled from two to four hours. Viewers are also spending more time watching television, up from 10 hours to 12 a week. The Jupiter Research survey of more than 5,000 people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that Europeans’ use of the internet is still behind the rates seen in the US. A similar study by Jupiter of US habits found that Americans now spend 14 hours a week online – as much time as they spend watching television – and just three hours reading print.