In a Meredith Corp. study, The Gamma Factor: Women and the New Social Cur­rency, the company describes Gamma women as everyday women with a large circle of friends who enjoy freely sharing information within their social networks using multiple media.

For the first time in a decade, catalog/Internet retailers are see­ing a slide in Internet sales as a percentage of total direct sales, according to the Direct Marketing Association's 2008 State of the Cata­log Industry report.

Lately, I've become interested in the sub­ject of trust as it relates to Internet mar­keting. Two annual studies that I've read recently, the 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer and Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient (RQ) survey, piqued my interest.

For the first time in a decade, Internet sales, as a percentage of total direct sales, took a dip for catalog/Internet retailers in 2007, according to the recently released 2008 State of the Catalog Industry Report, from the Direct Marketing Association.

Marketing success depends on matching the product to the market at the right time. In financial services, target marketing is typically based on analysis of response lists, customer data and campaign data combined with compiled data. In general, at the beginning of a campaign, the target selection criteria are mainly driven by knowledge gained from analysis of past performance.

Delivering the best results is the key to growing Microsoft's search marketing business, said Satya Nadella, SVP of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising group.

Nielsen Claritas has partnered with Nationwide Marketing Group to analyze customer data from select Nationwide member retailers. More than 2 million customer records will be analyzed with the Nielsen Claritas Prizm lifestyle segmentation system, which classifies consumers into 66 segments based on socio-economic data and lifestyle attributes.

SiteSpect, Inc., a provider of behavioral targeting technology, has entered into an alliance with enterprise marketing management firm Unica Corp. As partners, the companies said they will help integrate testing and optimization with Web analytics for online marketers, and periodically sponsor educational industry events.

Multichannel apparel merchant Casual Male Retail Group Inc. has launched BoldXL, a social networking site for young big-and-tall consumers.

Over the last few years, online video consumption has grown exponentially. However, video advertising has failed to meet the expectations of investors — even the most popular publishers struggle to sell sufficient inventory.