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TAKE NOTE
FRESH START TO THE NEW YEAR
The beginning of a new year is always a good time to rethink, revitalize
and renew, and perhaps retail store displays and advertising should
be top priorities.
According to Lifestyle Monitor™ from Cotton Incorporated,
42 percent of consumers say they get their home fabric ideas from
store and window displays, another 24 percent say they take inspiration
from magazines. Of the remaining one-third, 15 percent said they look
to catalogs for ideas.
OLDER SURFERS HIT THE NET
The Internet audience is becoming more and more representative of
the general U.S. population. People over the age of 65 make up the
fastest growing demographic online, surging 25 percent from last year
to 9.6 million surfers from home and work in October 2003, according
to a study by Nielson/Net Ratings, an Internet audience measurement
and analysis firm.
Within this senior citizen age group the number of female seniors
online jumped 30 percent while male seniors jumped 20 percent.
The second-fastest growing age group is Internet users aged 55 to
64, which grew 15 percent to 15.6 million users in October from 13.6
million the year before.
'DO NOT SPAN' LIST BEING CONSIDERED
Spam, or junk commercial e-mail, now reportedly accounts for more
than half of all U.S. e-mail traffic. In an attempt to hold back the
flood a new law, which took effect January 1, bans sending bulk commercial
e-mail using false identities and misleading subject lines. It also
requires all commercial e-mail messages to include a valid postal
address and give recipients the opportunity to opt out of receiving
more messages.
E-mail messages with adult or pornographic content will have to be
labeled in a manner to be determined by the Federal Trade Commission,
which is also authorized to study the feasibility of a “do not
spam” list that would be similar to the “do not call”
list for telemarketers.
Critics say the law pre-empts stricter state laws like the one passed
by California last fall, which requires marketers to get consumers’
permission before sending e-mail. The European Union has directed
its member countries to adopt permission-based e-mail policies. Britain
approved such a law in December. |
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