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Online consumers will be in for a challenging holiday season

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To understand consumers’ online research and spending plans this holiday season, Burst Media surveyed over 3,000 Internet users ages 18 and older in late August 2008 about their expected use of the web for the upcoming holiday season. 

With economic woes pervasive in news headlines, Burst fielded the survey again between September 21- 23, 2008 (n=1,247) to ascertain whether there had been a change in consumers’ planned holiday spending in the four weeks from the first survey.  The number of consumers who plan to spend less this holiday season has increased since late August. While we cannot correlate this change with the economic climate, September data shows a significant shift from our earlier reading.
 
Specifically, the survey findings show one-third (33.8%) of respondents expect to spend less on gifts and entertaining this holiday season compared to 2007, up from one-quarter (26.9%) who expected to spend less just four weeks ago.  Slightly less than one-third (30.7%) will spend “about the same” as last year, 16.6% will spend more, and 18.9% are unsure of their 2008 holiday spending. [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 5, 2008 @ 3:34 pm

Stack Media hits milestone with 100 million page views

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Stack Media hit a new milestone with 101 million page views in August. With over 4.2 million unique visitors in the US in August, up from 3.5 million in July, Stack Media continues to dominate the active young male category. The three-year-old sports media company sprinted past sports content giant Sports Illustrated in total number of page views, with 101 million versus 97 million, respectively.

By featuring top sports stars such as Reggie Bush, LeBron James and Peyton Manning in over 2,500 exclusive sports lifestyle and performance videos, Stack has created the ultimate digital experience for young males. In addition to its mass reach, Stack Media offers display and video brand advertisers the greatest efficiency against the highly desirable but elusive category of active young (12-to-24-year-old) males online. Stack Media also provides a distributed media content and advertising platform bringing together Stack-owned and operated sites with a number of related, market-leading sites, including the renowned sports retailer, Eastbay.com.

Originally posted on September 25, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

YouTube gets 5 billion online views from US alone

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comScore released its July 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month.

In July, Google Sites once again ranked as the top US video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed (representing a 44 percent share of the online video market), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 446 million videos (3.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 282 million (2.5 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 269 million (2.4 percent). Hulu, the supposedly YouTube killer, ranked eighth with 119 million videos, representing 1 percent of all videos viewed.

More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (92.1 million), who watched an average of 55 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.9 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.6 million) and Microsoft Sites (32.6 million).

Originally posted on September 10, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

Majority of people with disabilities say they don’t have political voice

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Majority of people (91 percent) of people with disabilities believe they receive less attention than other minority groups from the presidential candidates, according to a recent poll conducted by Disaboom, the online community for people with disabilities.

In a follow-up poll to gain an understanding of the key political issues of importance to people with disabilities, respondents identified healthcare, unemployment and community support as the key issues they’d like to see addressed by the candidates in the 2008 election.

Disaboom’s most recent poll asked respondents to identify, from a list of nine political issues, their choice of the top issue facing people with disabilities in this election.

(1) 44 percent of respondents identified healthcare as the top issue facing people with disabilities in this election.

(2) 18 percent identified unemployment rate as the top issue.

(3) 10 percent identified community support as the top issue.

Other issues of importance to people with disabilities identified by poll respondents include housing, accessible transportation, gas prices, the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, education and veterans’ issues.

This announcement follows Disaboom’s recent findings that 57 percent of people with disabilities support Barack Obama and 37 percent of people with disabilities support John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

For more information about the political issues of interest to people with disabilities, visit Disaboom’s 2008 Election coverage.

Originally posted on September 3, 2008 @ 7:13 am

More online Americans now banking and paying bills online

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An estimated 63.1 million American households or three-fourth of those online are paying their bills online rather than writing checks, a survey sponsored by CheckFree revealed.

The survey indicates that consumers are more confident about online security as more Americans are gaining experience in using Internet services, making security concerns less of a barrier to online bill payment adoption than in the past. In the latest survey, only 13 percent of respondents cited online security as the top reason for not using the online bill payment service, down from 17 percent in the 2007 survey. Overall, online security ranked third among barriers to online bill payment adoption this year, compared to its number-one ranking in 2007. The primary barrier (15%) in the new study was “I don’t know enough about how it works.”

For the second year in a row, American consumers who go online each month paid more of their household bills online at bank and billing organization websites than by any other method. An estimated 31 million households are using online banking websites to pay bills, 47.9 million households are using biller websites and 16 million are using both online banking and biller sites to receive and pay bills. Approximately 63.1 million of Internet-using households pay at least one bill online in an average month, up from 61 million in the 2007 survey. These households collectively paid 934 million bills in a typical month, according to the survey results.

Online bill payments continued to outpace check bill payments for the second consecutive year. Online bill payments made at both bank and biller websites rose to 42 percent of the total volume of household bill payments made each month, up from 39 percent in the 2007 survey. Online bill payment adoption has significantly grown since the 2002 survey, when only 14 percent reported paying their bills online.

The survey polled 3,031 US consumers who use the Internet, were at least 21 years of age and were at least partly responsible for household bill payments. The online survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. The results are considered representative of the nation’s 85.1 million Internet-connected households.

Originally posted on August 27, 2008 @ 7:56 pm