Most Popular Recent Charts/Stories

The ad-supported internet ecosystem contributed about 5% to US GDP in 2011, per a recent IAB report, and a new study provides another perspective regarding the internet's influence on the economy. The IBISWorld study examines annualized revenue growth over the past 10 years, coming to the conclusion that the fastest-growing US industries all share a common trait: they're all online-based. Social network game development tops the charts with an annualized growth rate of 134.4% since 2003. Read more »

Good - and bad - customer service interactions affect brand loyalty, according to [pdf] results from a survey of more than 1,000 individuals who have had experiences with the customer service of a mid-sized company. The survey, conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by ZenDesk, found that 62% of B2B and 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good experience, while 66% and 52% respectively stopped making purchases after a bad experience. Companies beware: respondents reported being more likely to share bad than good experiences. Read more »

30% of teens name Twitter as their most important social network, close behind the 33% who tab Facebook, per results [pdf] from Piper Jaffray's 25th Semi-Annual teen research project, which surveyed more than 5,000 teens. The trends favor Twitter, though: compared to the last survey, conducted in the Fall of 2012, the proportion of teens naming Facebook as their most important has dropped 9% points, while those naming Twitter have grown by 3% points. Instagram is also gaining, up 5% points to 17% indicating it as their most important social network. Read more »

The number of American pay TV subscribers cutting the cord to focus solely on Netflix, over the air, online, and other sources is growing faster than expected, according to the latest study from Convergence Consulting Group. Last year, the researchers predicted that 930,000 pay TV subscribers would cut the cord, but this year estimate that 1.08 million went ahead and did so. That represents 1.1% of pay TV subscribers, and means that between 2008 and 2012, 3.74 million (3.7%) of US TV subscribers cut their subscriptions. Read more »

62% of Americans aged 12 and up report having a profile on a social network, and Facebook is easily dominant, used by 58% of Americans of that age, per results [download page] from a study conducted by Arbitron and Edison Research. Among age groups, 18-24-year-olds are the most likely to have a profile on a social network (86%), and also sport the highest average number of Facebook friends, at 510. Read more »

54% of advertising agencies say their clients are more interested in advertising on TV than any other medium, compared with 30% who feel the same way about digital, according to the latest quarterly survey from STRATA. But 22% find it a challenge to optimize their media mix, a 4-year high for the survey. And as seen elsewhere recently, traditional media appears to be losing the battle to digital: close to one-third of respondents believe they'll be spending more on digital than traditional media within 1-3 years, as separate results indicate that interest in several traditional media is waning. Read more »

Baby Boomers were born in a narrow window of time (between 1946 and 1964) but they represent 44% of the US population, and their buying power is considerable: they hold 70% of US disposable income, and buy 49% of total consumer-packaged goods (CPG), according to [download page] an August 2012 report by Nielsen and BoomAgers. Read more »

The longer the length (in characters) of a B2C email subject line, the higher its open, click, and click-to-open rates, finds Adestra [download page] in a July 2012 study of 932 million emails from more than 40,000 campaigns across 6 sectors, sent over a 6-month period. The results show that B2C emails have a below-average click-to-open rate (CTOR) for subject lines between 20 and 60 characters in length, but after that pick up steam, hitting their peak at 150 characters in length. Read more »

Emails sent in the morning result in the highest open rates, reports Informz [download page], which based its finding on an analysis of metrics collected from more than 600 million emails sent by over 700 large and mid-sized associations that used its email marketing platform in 2011. Morning emails saw an average open rate of 39.2%, ahead of those sent at midday (33.9%), in the late afternoon (32.1%), and at night (32%). However, emails sent in the morning had the lowest click rate (16.5%), behind ones sent at night (18.6%), at midday (19.7%), and in the late afternoon (21%). Read more »

Two-thirds of adults in the US and UK say they receive too many digital marketing promotions and are exposed to too many ads, according to a survey released in February 2012 by Upstream, conducted by YouGov. Marketers beware: consumers will not be shy to act. Two-thirds say they would unsubscribe from a brand's promotions if they thought the messages they were receiving were too frequent, while 27% in the UK and 20% in the US say they would stop using the brand's product or service. Read more »