The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently called for the complete elimination of all fast-food related advertising towards young children. The group has asked the U.S. Congree and the FCC to reduce the number of time allowed for advertising to children by 50% to just six minutes per hour. The American Academy of Pediatrics is even targeting college campuses and the amount of junk food exposure corporate fast food joints are using. They even weigh in on how advertisements for sexual performance drugs like Viagra make sex seem recreational.

It might be old news to some, but it is widely believed that young adults make up the bulk of the MySpace, Facebook, and consumer generated content market. According to a recent study conducted by the American Marketing Association, the majority of adults love the chance to develop consumer generated ads and content for big business while the younger adults really do not care.

“AMA’s survey revealed that compared to a company that uses only professional advertising, most adults feel that a company that uses customer-created advertising is more customer-friendly (68%), creative (56%), and innovative (55%).

Survey respondants between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely than those between the ages of 25 and 64 to say a company that uses customer-created advertising is less trustworthy (21% versus 10%, respectively), less socially-responsible (20% versus 10%, respectively) and less customer-friendly (13% versus 5%, respectively).” Read The Full Report

A new report from ContactMusic shows that many industry analysts and speculators might not have all their marbles when criticizing online ad spending on YouTube. The recent study reveals that YouTube attracts 54.5% of its’ traffic from the 35 to 64 year old crowd while only 12.7% comes from the 12 to 17 year old crowd. Another research firm, Comscore, noted that 61.6 percent of visitors to YouTube earn more than $60,000 per year.

ArsTechnica called the statistics “scary news for TV execs” and noted they “go a long way towards explaining why Google paid a staggering $1.64 billion to buy out YouTube last month. The fact that older, richer eyeballs are peering at YouTube videos makes that space especially attractive for advertisers.”

Thanks in part to all the media hype surrounding the “new” Cyber Monday, internet shopping this year resulted in record traffic and sales. For example, WalMart.com reported a 60% boost in traffic on Monday and many websites reported server overload with as much as 4 times normal traffic levels. To find out what everyone was buying we checked out Shopping.com for the scoop.
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A new poll conducted by AOL Shopping and Zogby International finds that ome 80 percent of U.S. Web users plan to do some of their holiday shopping online this year, while nearly a quarter of the (24 percent) plan to spent most of their holiday budget online.

Looking at the top 20 retail markets reveals that New Yorkers are planning to spend the most online, with an average of $1,483.36—some 70 percent of their holiday budgets—going to online vendors.

Some 58 percent of respondents noted that online shopping saved time, while 32 percent said shopping online simplifies comparing prices. Another 29 percent say they can find gift items online they cannot find in stores, and 17 percent cite online promotions and last-minute shopping as reasons they turn to online retailers. Only 9 percent of respondents cited gasoline costs as a reason to shop online.

What do people prefer to buy online rather than in a store? Books and music (60 %), electronics (35 %), toys/games (31 %), clothing (29 %), and computer software (23 %).

At my college, my professors constantly complain that we are selfish students for constantly letting stacks of a free copy of the Wall Street Journal pile up. Who could blame them? Yet, something the baby boomer generation doesn’t know is that we are looking to a world a little closer to home.

Mainstream newspapers are dwindling in circulation but college newspapers are spiraling out of control. A recent research showed that 76% of 6 million full time undergrads in the U.S. read their campus newspaper occasionally. These student run newspapers (*cough* consumer generated content) are wildly popular as the Boston Globe points out.

One of the most notable examples of the trend occurred in late summer, when a subsidiary of MTV, one of the country’s best-known youth brands and part of the Viacom entertainment empire, bought College Publisher, a company that runs websites for about 450 college papers. Students “have a massive amount of buying power,” said Jason Bakker, marketing director at Campus Media Group, a Minnesota marketing company that helps ad agencies reach high school and college students

MySpace blogger Mike posted a pretty lengthy manifesto on why sex and advertising are two pools that shouldn’t be mixed together. Blogger Mike believes that sex in advertising is a direct assault on advertising and religous freedom. Mike believes that sex in ads leads to a sort of “prostitution ring” and is a contributing factor why consumers today are less trustful than before. Its interesting how he examines 12 biblical reasons why the use of sex in advertising is immoral and just wrong while quoting biblical versus and scriptures.

To look lustfully on a woman is adultery of the heart. (Matthew 5:27-29 NKJV) “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ {28} “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. {29} “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Results of the eighth annual CyberSource Corporation survey of e-commerce fraud, released yesterday, shows that U.S. merchants will lose as much as $3 billion in revenue to fraud in 2006, up from $2.8 billion the year before. The good news: As a percent of revenue, fraud losses will be slightly less this year — merchants expect to lose 1.4 percent of revenue, down from 1.6 percent last year. Overall, merchants say 1.1 percent of accepted orders later turn out to be fraudulent. In response to fraud risk, more merchants than ever before are reviewing some orders manually. Eighty-one percent of merchants in the sample now conduct manual reviews, compared to 73 percent last year.

In response to growing fraud losses and ever increasing e-commerce volume, online sellers are turning to tools and systems that will automate and streamline fraud-management. Overall, the use of anti-fraud tools grew 14 percent from 4.2 to 4.8 tools used per merchant. The largest bussineses, those selling more than $100 million online annually, average nearly eight tools.

The Cincinnati Post recently revealed that a copy of Toyota’s “global master plan” calls for 15% of the world’s car market by 2010. The report revealed that Toyota hopes to unseat rival GM as the world’s largest car manufacturer. Toyoth executives are planning on entering the Russia, China, India, and Brazil market to fuel it’s rapid expansion efforts.

Toyota already has one plant in India, with production of 44,500 units, one plant in Brazil, without output of 57,800, and five plants in China, with combined output of 443,000. It plans to open another plant in China in mid-2007 and boost production at other facilities to raise China output to 693,000. Its first Russia plant, with capacity of 50,000 units, is scheduled to open in late 2007.

South Dakota, Nevada, and Wyoming are the most entrepreneur-friendly states, according to a new survey by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.

The 11th annual “Small Business Survival Index” evaluated each state’s public policy climate for small businesses. Rankings were based on 29 major government-imposed or government-related costs, including state and local property taxes, personal income tax, number of health insurance mandates, crime rate, and electric utility costs.

Other states that ranked highly include Alabama (No. 4), Washington (No. 5), and Florida (No. 6).

The survey found that the District of Columbia has the least friendly policy environment for entrepreneurs. Other states deemed unfriendly to entrepreneurs include Rhode Island (No. 48), California (No. 49) and New Jersey (No. 50). Read

A new marketing research report recently compiled by eMarketer reveals that a large portion of business-to-business marketers are slowly advancing to the world of online marketing. The new report shows that online spending in the B2B sector wll rise 23.7% in 2007 to a whopping $2.4 billion. Nevertheless, print advertising remains the king with a four time higher revenue compared to online advertising. The new report says that in 2008 that online marketing will start closing the gap on print ads. This means big risks for business owners and B2B marketers that are not in the loop of online marketing and the Web 2.0 world.

View The Report

The Touchpoints IV Survey (.pdf file) reveals that online consumers are more likely to “view through” an online advertisement than click one. That is, a “view through” is when an text or graphical based advertisement online causes someone to visit that sponsor not directly through a click but later through an online search or direct URL write-in.

Some interesting highlights of the study are presented below;

- 61% of respondents said they see web ads, do not click on them, but several hours or days later they are likely to visit the advertiser.

- Only 30% of respondents would click directly on a text or graphical banner to visit the advertisers.

- 67% of those surveyed said they see online ads and will later visit the physical store due to the ad.

MySpace continues to grow by 51% between March and September 2006 and other social networking sites are gaining popularity as well. A new report by HitWise revealed that e-commerce and business websites received (on average) 2.4% of their visits directly from MySpace during the month of September 06′. Other websites that are receiving hits from their MySpace Business Profiles include the telecommunication, banking, and travel industry.

The report showed that business profiles for teen-oriented retailers Hot Topic and American Ealge have received the most MySpace users and traffic to their website. Read

A new study by Gomez and JupiterResearch found that while the majority of shoppers plan on doing their shopping online, whether researching or placing orders, customers are going to be faced with product shortages across the board this Holiday season. The study also revealed most online shoppers are more impatient than ever.

A study by Gomez found that 9 out of 10 Holiday shoppers are planning to shop online and nearly 50% of those shoppers are facing ‘out of stock’ notices when trying to buy online. Another study by JupiterResearch revealed Holiday shoppers will not wait more than 4 seconds for a web site to load before switching online retailers.

Euro marketers are toasting to the tune of an unbelievable €83 billion online advertising expenditure by the year 2011. The new report launched by Internet Retailer establishes the European online advertising industry to account for 8.3% of sum online ad spending by 2011. JupiterResearch released a similar report showing search engine marketing in Europe to increase at an above normal rate over the next 5 years.

As internet becomes more widely available throughout Europe, industry expertts are predicting ad spending to continue to grow and search engine advertising to grow at a rate of 58% next year versus 49% in 2005. Read