Award Winning Blog - Agitator

More Online Shopping = More Online Giving

E-commerce merchants continue to train American consumers to buy online … and ultimately, to give. That’s my conclusion from the latest Pew Internet Project report on online shopping. Two-thirds of online users have purchased a product online, such as books, music or clothing. And 81% have used the internet to do research about a product they were […]

Learn More February 21, 2008

Sick Cows. Sick Abuse. And a Vigorous, Effective Response.

Fallout from the dramatic and disturbing undercover video of the gross abuse of sick cows in a meat processing plant in California continued to capture the attention of the national and international tv networks and newspapers this week. The video, shot by an undercover agent for the Humane Society of the United States, triggered the […]

Learn More February 20, 2008

10 Billion Views

That’s how many online videos were watched in the US in December, making it the biggest viewing month since measurements began, according to the latest figures from comScore. One in three views occurred in a Google site (3.2 billion on YouTube). The next closest competitors, Fox Interactive Media and Yahoo, had less than 4% each. Online […]

Learn More February 19, 2008

Threat To Direct Mail

Here’s a subtle example of the "forces" aligning to diminish the future viability of direct mail. Seth Godin writes here about "Profligate." He makes the point that consumers increasingly will be offended by wasteful packaging. It will affect their purchase decisions. Apply that to "wasteful" direct mail. Environmental groups in particular have always felt varying degrees […]

Learn More February 15, 2008

What Do Women Want … On the Net?

This article from Ad Age says that 2007 was the year that women became more than 50% of online users. What do women want online? Ad Age pulled some factoids from various studies, for example: Community — visits to "women’s community" sites like iVillage jumped 35% last year, and such sites tied with "politics" as […]

Learn More February 14, 2008

Her News Isn’t His News

Men and women differ in the kind of news they follow, and what news sources they use, as this report from Pew Research confirms. Men constitute roughly 60% or more of the audience for Washington news (59% men), International (63%), Business/financial (65%), Science/technology (69%), and Sports (74%). And men disproportionately lean to radio and online […]

Learn More February 13, 2008