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The economy may have come back from the brink, but demand for digital coupons appears to be picking up steam, according to new data released by Coupons.com. The company said savings from coupons printed out or loaded to a loyalty card from its online properties doubled to more than $1 billion from $529 million a year ago. The value of savings in June alone hit $110 million, the highest total to date for any single month via Coupons.com. That increase has come despite traffic to the site actually dropping in the last year from 18.2 million monthly visitors to 14.5 million. Read more at www.mediapost.com

Apparently, in-text advertisements, those seemingly annoying little ads that pop up when someone moves a cursor over a hot-linked piece of text in an article, can create impactful campaigns. According to a comScore study, Kontera’s in-text targeted ads delivered five times greater brand awareness than traditional display ads, and twice as much lift in brand purchase intent.

The study suggests 34% of consumers strongly felt Kontera in-text ads “clutter the page,” compared with 61% for interstitials, 52% for video ads, 45% for rectangle ads, and 36% for banners.

Twenty-one percent of consumers strongly agreed the in-text ads are “related to content,” compared with 14% for rectangle ads, 14% for interstitials, 10% for video, 15% for Google text ads, and 11% for banners.

Thirty three percent say in-text ads a less intrusive ad format, compared with 40% for rectangle ads, 53% for video ads, 63% for interstitial ads, and 29% for banners. Read more at www.mediapost.com

Time spent on Yahoo sites hit a new U.S. low in June, according to traffic data released by comScore today. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney compiled the data in a report today and produced the chart below.

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According to the findings of the 2010 Digital Influence Index, by Fleishman-Hillard International Communications with Harris Interactive, when it comes to driving consumer decisions about a range of products and services, the Internet is by far the most influential media channel, but marketers have yet to capitalize on that influence.

Of the seven nations the study addressed, four reported the Internet to be the most important source of information. China ranked the web highest in importance, followed by Germany, Japan, and the U.K., placing it above advice from friends, family or coworkers, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, postal mail and e?mail. And though respondents spend a significant amount of time on the web, they still reported peer advice as an important information source. The Internet and peer advice tied in importance among Americans.

Net Importance Of The Internet Compared To Other Media (Net % of Respondents Considering Selected Media to Be Absolutely Essential or Extremely Important)     TV Radio Newspapers Magazines  Internet (not e?mail)  E?mail  China 3% ?18% 35% 6% 84% 68%  U.S. ?28% ?53% ?34% ?68% 1% ?4%  Japan 9% ?30% 8% ?22% 36% 16%  Germany 17% 9% 18% ?14% 52% 30%  U.K. ?26% ?54% ?54% ?66% 15% ?14%  France ?39% ?32% ?22% ?24% 10% ?18%  Canada ?36% ?43% ?26% ?62% 3% ?16% Source: Fleishman-Hillard International, June 2010; Net Importance calculated by subtracting Bottom 2 importance scores (not at all/somewhat) from top?three importance scores (Essential, Extremely, Very)   Detailed findings of consumer behavior in an average week: In the U.S., 42% of online consumers do not read magazines and 40% do not read a printed newspaper. In Canada, 42% of online consumers do not read magazines and 28% do not read a printed newspaper.  In the U.K., 36% of online consumers do not read magazines and 33% do not read a printed newspaper.  In France, 31% of online consumers do not read magazines and 28% do not read a printed newspaper.  In Japan, 29% of online consumers do not read magazines and 24% do not read a printed newspaper.  In Germany, 28% of online consumers do not read magazines and 26% do not read a printed newspaper.  In China, 5% of online consumers do not read magazines and 6% do not read a printed newspaper.     Read more at www.mediapost.com

Email marketers searching for subject lines that will grab their recipients’ attention should look to highly relevant, time-based messages for the best results, according to data from Experian Cheetahmail.

The email marketing services company conducted a study of more than 40,000 messages in March 2010 and discovered that, overall, almost half of transactions and about three-quarters of opens and clicks happen within a day of receiving a marketing email. So good results will often come fast.

One of the fastest ways to get email recipients to open and click on messages is to send notices of abandoned carts. As Sara Ezrin, senior director of strategic services at Cheetahmail, explained to eMarketer, recipients of such messages are already thinking about the items in their cart, and that they are in the market for those products will spur them toward quick response.

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Companies in retail, travel and auto industries dug into budgets during the second quarter in 2010 to spend 24% more on paid-search ads overall, compared with the prior year, and 9.7% sequentially, according to the Efficient Frontier Q2 2010 Executive Summary released Tuesday.

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The Nielsen Company reported in June that, on average, the global consumer spends about 1 in every 4.5 minutes online on blogs or social networking sites. According to a report by market researcher Morpace, among US Facebook users time on Facebook rises to 1 in 3 minutes spent online.

Unsurprisingly, despite Facebook’s growing appeal to older users, 18- to 34-year-olds spend the most time on the site per week, at 8.5 hours out of 22.4 spent online. Weekly Facebook time drops to 4.6 hours among users ages 55 and older, representing a lower proportion of that group’s average of 21.5 hours per week on the internet.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.

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Top Display Advertising Site Categories (April 2010 Total U.S. Home & Work Locations) Publisher Total Display Ad Impressions (MM) Share of Impressions Estimated Spending ($ 000) Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) Total Internet Audience 354,636 100.0% 893,681 $2.52 Social Networking 98,176 27.7% 54,684 $0.56 Portals 69,664 19.6% 181,266 $2.60 Entertainment 38,104 10.7% 181,147 $4.75 e-mail 34,327 9.7% 32,370 $0.94 Community 15,884 4.5% 33,435 $2.10 General News 12,542 3.5% 77,055 $6.14 Sports 10,850 3.1% 68,214 $6.29 Newspapers 8,506 2.4% 59,441 $6.99 Online Gaming 7,929 2.2% 21,234 $2.68 Photos 7,391 2.1% 7,953 $1.08 Source: comScore Ad Metrix, June 2010 Read more at www.mediapost.com

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The 2010 Social Networking Report provides the hard data behind this consumer revolution, including the fact that fully 66% of online Americans use social networking sites today, up from just 20% in 2007. Social networking is an increasingly addictive activity, with nearly half of those who access such sites (43%) reporting that they visit them multiple times per day. While users of social networking sites may have initially signed up to better keep in touch with friends, a growing number say they now use sites like Facebook to connect with family members. An astounding 70% of social networkers keep in touch with family via their various online networks, up from 61% a year ago. Read more at www.smrb.com

Many social media marketers are eager to tie a hard number to the value of their efforts. To that end, firms have attempted to analyze the worth of fans and followers on social networking sites like Facebook.

Digital consulting firm Syncapse and research company Hotspex have come up with an empirical formula that puts an average value of $136.38 on the Facebook fans of the site’s 20 biggest corporate brands. Most of that value comes from how much the fans will spend on the brand’s products, with additional dollars coming from customer loyalty, recommendations and earned media.

The study found that people spent significantly more on products they were fans of, compared with consumers who were not fans. In the case of many of Facebook’s most popular food and beverage marketers, fan spending was more than double that of non-fans.

The pattern of increased fan spending held across all of the top 20 brands on Facebook, with differences ranging from 51% for Oreo fans to 168% for fans of Nokia. Read more at www.emarketer.com

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According to the results of the 2010 Mom Social Influencer segmentation study by BabyCenter, five unique segments of social moms are broken down into two categories, the Influencers, Field Experts, Lifecasters and Pros, and the Influenced, labeled in the report as Butterflies and the Audience.  The Influencers make up only 18% of social moms, but they wield 78% of the influence.

Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter says “Since 2006, the number of moms using social media has skyrocketed more than 500%… marketers (can) shift their mindset from social media to social marketing by gaining a better understanding of who the mom influencers are… “

Share of Influence by Social Medium    Share of Influence (% of Respondents in Social Category)   Blogs Twitter Facebook BabyCenter Influencer    Field Experts 0 1 18 44    Lifecasters 2 29 47 32    Pros 89% 68 5 2 Influenced    Butterflies 6 5 15 3    Audience 1 3 15 17 Source: BabyCenter 2010 Mom Social Influencer Study, June 2010 (percentages approximate rounded) Read more at www.mediapost.com