It looks like 2012 was a good year for global advertising spending, especially in the digital sector.

The latest Global AdView Pulse report issued by Nielsen shows total spending of $139 billion, a 4.3 percent increase in Q3 2012 ad spending over Q3 2011. This increase outpaced the 2.7 percent growth in the first half of 2012.

In North America, ad spending for Q3 rose 10.2 percent. The Asia Pacific region grew 3.5 percent in Q3, with China showing a Q3 increase of 3.1 percent after two consecutive declining quarters. Western Europe's Q3 ad spending, however, declined 4.8 percent.

The most impressive ad growth on a year-to-date basis was in the Middle East and Africa, which saw an 18.9 percent increase from January through September 2012.

Randall Beard, global head of advertiser solutions for Nielsen, cautioned that the Q3 data could be a reflection of spending on the Olympics and the U.S. presidential election. "We'll be watching carefully to see if the growth was sustained in Q4 and into 2013, or if there's a dip in comparison to this year," Beard said.Continue reading...

You may have read (or red — see above) Ford's attempts so far to reposition Lincoln as a saddle without a horse. But at least one key indicator of brand equity shows that Lincoln already has been able to boost perceptions with a branding and advertising campaign even before much is available in the way of new vehicles that are planned under its revival.

Reintroducing the brand with its full-page "Hello Again" newspaper ads, a series of five TV spots, the renaming of the brand as "Lincoln Motor Company," and persuading talk show host Jimmy Fallon to rally his 7.3 million Twitter followers to crowdsource Super Bowl ad ideas has helped Lincoln quintuple its impression levels since early November, YouGov BrandIndex research indicates.Continue reading...

As the holidays are fast upon us, the brightest creative-commerce minds are devising promotions, deals and give-aways to snare the 2012 shopper wherever and whenever he or she may be.

The U.S. National Retail Foundation estimates that Holiday 2012 shoppers will spend $750 per family (up less than 1% from last year), with shopping smarter particularly important for higher-priced tech items that one-third of the population is focused on as lead gifts.

New research from Accenture shows a shift in consumer purchasing behavior and use of shopping channels, specifically online, regarding personalization vs. privacy, digital vs. in-store shopping and the rise of “showrooming.”Continue reading...

Smartphones are pretty smart as it is now. But in five years’ time, they could be smelling you to see if you have a cold, allow users to feel objects from across the globe, and see such things as cell structures that are likely to turn into a melanoma. Not too shabby, right?

Some of IBM’s top researchers share the news on these potential capabilities – and plenty more – in the company’s new list of five predictions of innovations that will change our lives in the next five years. The annual "Smarter Planet" look what’s coming down the pike in the world of technology this year is grouped around cognitive computing, another name for trying to get computers to behave more like humans.

“With all due respect to current technology, our computers today are just large calculators,” said Paul Bloom, the CTO of Telecom Research at IBM. “They calculate very fast and lots of data, but they really don’t think.” That is about to change. IBM has released five videos (watch below) to showcase how computing may change each of the five senses — hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and seeing. Researchers, for example, are getting closer to “hearing” mudslides and other natural disasters before they actually occur.

"This is really an assistive technology," commented Dr. Bernard Meyerson, IBM's VP of research. "It can't go off on its own. It's not designed to do that. What it's designed to do, in fact, is respond to a human in an assistive manner. But by providing a human-style of input, it's freed us from the task of programming and moved to the task of training. It simply has — not more intelligence — but more bandwidth, and there's a huge difference between the two."Continue reading...

Young Emily Whitehead, who turned 7 in May, was saved from near death from leukemia after relapsing twice after chemotherapy – and with all viable options running out. In desperation, her parents sought experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, using a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram her immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. 

“She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer,” reports The New York Times.

The treatment, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, the Times noted in a separate story, “may signify a turning point in the long struggle to develop effective gene therapies against cancer. And not just for leukemia patients: other cancers may also be vulnerable to this novel approach — which employs a disabled form of H.I.V.-1, the virus that causes AIDS, to carry cancer-fighting genes into the patients’ T-cells. In essence, the team is using gene therapy to accomplish something that researchers have hoped to do for decades: train a person’s own immune system to kill cancer cells.”

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, lead of the U Penn research team, echoed by his colleague, Dr. John Wagner, director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, who said the Pennsylvania results were “phenomenal” and  “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent. I think this is a major breakthrough.”

Cue Novartis, which has committed $20 million to building a research center on the university’s campus to ready the treatment for public consumption. In August 2012, Novartis acquired exclusive rights from Penn to CART–19, the therapy now known as CTL019. Unlike trials for commercial development of drugs like Viagra or cholesterol meds where millions consume the same drugs, Emma’s treatment requires a new batch of T-cells for each patient.Continue reading...

One in five consumers in 2012 switched companies they buy from including wireless phone, internet service and retailers according to new research released today from Accenture. 

The Accenture Global Consumer Survey polled more than 12,000 consumers in 32 countries and found that 85% of consumers would have stayed if their provider had acted differently. “Companies need to embrace the changing dynamics of what we call the nonstop customer experience,” Robert Wollan, global managing director of the Accenture Sales & Customer Services told brandchannel.

“The traditional customer-engagement funnel—beginning with cultivating awareness and ending with securing a customer’s purchase and loyalty—has lost its relevance. After all, many of today’s buyers neither enter nor exit a channel at one single point. As long as they’re using a smartphone, tablet or Internet-enabled PC, they are continuously in the channel.”Continue reading...

The urban Chinese consumer has greater confidence that green products are better for the environment than their North American counterparts, according to the a new study from DuPont — its China Green Living Survey: Consumer Awareness and Adoption of Biobased Products.

Seventy percent were either very or somewhat confident that green products are better for the environment, while of North American consumers, 65% of Canadians and 60% of Americans held similar beliefs.

The findings have exponential potential for greening-up in the world’s largest consumer market with growing demands for China to meet its sustainability targets. “Greater adoption of biobased products in China could help the country reduce its energy intensity and carbon emissions and advance a new era of green manufacturing,” stated Jeremy Xu, VP, Global Sales and Applications, DuPont Industrial Biosciences.  

A majority of Chinese consumers are likely to purchase apparel, personal care, hygiene and household products made from biobased ingredients that offer environmental benefits. More than three quarters of respondents would definitely or likely buy such products in a range of categories including: Detergents 82%, Personal hygiene 81%, Clothing 78%, Personal Care Products 77%.Continue reading...

We won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but according to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, “all signs point to Cyber Monday being a banner year for retailers, marketers and CMOs. With sales up 24.1 percent over 2011, the multiscreen shopper is out in full force this year.”

Black Friday in-store sales were undercut by Thanksgiving Early Bird sales, as well as mobile and web e-commerce, and according to the Wall Street Journal, "Total spending for the weekend reached an estimated $59.1 billion, a 13% increase from a year ago, according to the National Retail Federation...A consumer survey conducted for the trade association by BIGinsight found that shoppers spent an average of $423 over the weekend, up 6% from $398 last Thanksgiving weekend."

Sales projections for today, re-christened ‘Mobile Monday,’ will be further fueled by smartphones leveraging a plethora of apps. "Our findings reinforce that mobile is not just another channel," Chia Chen, mobile practice leader for Digitas, told Mobile Commerce Daily. "It's a technology-driven cultural phenomenon that is changing how people are connecting to brands and commerce.” Continue reading...