Yesterday, Facebook announced the acquisition of Instagram, a popular photo sharing network with over 30 million users, for $1 billion. Visits to the Instagram website have steadily increased over the past 24 weeks and reached 3.8 million last...

According to Epsilon Targeting’s latest Consumer Channel Preference Study of 5,000 consumers in North America, 60% of consumers report an "emotional boost" from receiving direct mail, agreeing that they enjoying checking their mailbox. This report showed that across all categories, direct mail continues to be a trusted source of information. It's always good to reach out to consumers via email, but the disadvantage to this is that the consumer has the ability to receive emails from you on their own terms, which may be infrequent or not at all. The use of direct mail has shown to be a pleasing emotional hook. Even with the ever growing digital world, consumers are still responding to your direct mail pieces. Don't let your businesses address contact data fall to the wayside - this is still just as important as ever to have. To ensure as timely delivery, make sure you're using address validation tools to make sure you're saving money and getting the most out of your direct mail campaigns.

Thanks to simulcast streaming of games online and via mobile apps, die-hards are better equipped to keep track of multiple games at once. Those who stream games online live in every corner of the country, but some locales are more likely to log on for their March Madness fix than others.

The social media space continues to evolve. Pinterest, a site launched in March 2010 that describes itself as an online pinboard to organize and share things you love, recently emerged as one of the top 10 websites within the Hitwise Social Networking & Forums category. The invitation only site received nearly 11 million total visits during the week ending December 17, 2011, almost 40 times the number of total visits versus just six months ago (week ending June 18, 2011). Pinterest content has something for everyone, but the site is dominated by images featuring home décor, crafts, fashion, and food. Not surprisingly, visitors to the site in the 12 rolling weeks ending December 17th skewed female (58%) and between the ages of 25 and 44 (59%). Pinterest and the Social Networking & Forums category both receive their highest share of visits from California and Texas. However, the Social Networking category as a whole over-indexes on share of visits from Northeastern states while Pinterest over-indexes on visits from the states in the Northwest and Southeast. This data indicates that Pinterest visitors have a different profile versus their counterparts visiting other social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. In fact, nine of the top ten over-indexed states for Pinterest visitors also over-index for the Hobbies and Crafts category (versus the online population) which is expected given the abundance of crafts content on the website. When comparing the Mosaic USA 2011 types that visit both Pinterest.com and Hobbies and Crafts websites during the 12 weeks ending December 17, 2011, the data shows that Boomers and Boomerangs are the group most likely to visit, particularly the Pinterest website (comprising over 10% of visits). This group of consumers is characterized as baby boomers and young adults who are heavy web users who spend time on house and garden, sports and fitness, and family-oriented websites. This information is useful to companies who wish to target their content to be “pinned” by Pinterest users. Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today's analysis.

We are asking marketers – specifically retailers – to take a look back at the Holiday selling season because there are a few steps to take in order to finish out strong and THEN start the new year off right.

With record ad spending predicted for the 2012 election, the rest of the nation will soon be bombarded with television ads “approved by” politicians from the left, right and the center of the political spectrum.

Social media continues to be one of the fastest growing industries online. Between September 2010 and September 2011 visits to Social Networks and Forums have increased by nearly 11% and, if you saw my Internet clock blog last month, social media accounts for nearly a quarter of all time spent online. But when are people engaging with social media the most?

With more than 80 million mobile internet users in the United States, retailers can really benefit from this communication channel. More and more companies are also offering their own phone apps so customers can search for product information and deals on the go.

With all the debate and speculation regarding Groupon and its planned IPO, I thought it would be a great time to check back in with our previous analysis of traffic to Groupon and its nearest competitor Living Social.