Close to one out of five U.S. Internet users will go online to buy gifts for Mother’s Day according to a survey by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation called “2008 Mother’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey.”

“Consumers will be very cautious with their wallets this Mother’s Day, heeding mom’s advice that she really doesn’t need much,” said BIGresearch Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist. “Gas prices and other economic issues will still be at the forefront of people’s minds as they shop around for the perfect gift for mom.”

Those surveyed said they planned to spend an average of $138.63 for Mother’s Day this, down slightly from $139.14 last year. The NRF said it expected total consumer spending for the holiday to reach $15.8 billion.

A small portion of U.S. adults will be going online for more than just shopping. Five percent said they planned to contact their mom online on Mother’s Day.

Nielsen has launched a new reporting service that focuses on audience measurement of online and mobile called TotalWeb.

TotalWeb shows the unduplicated, unique audience for 200 major Web sites across the PC and mobile space, which will be useful as the two converge.  Nielsen says that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the total size of their audience.

“The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile.

“Publishers can now monetize their total cross-platform audience, and advertisers will better understand the efficiency and incremental value of mobile Web traffic.”

TotalWeb’s first report found that for many sites, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience by 13 percent over PC alone.

According to Nielsen, 87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services, and more than one in ten mobile subscribers (13.7 percent) actively uses mobile Internet each month.

The majority (87%) of young people between the ages of 12-17 use some form of electronic personal communication, including text messaging, email or instant messaging, or post comments on social networking sites according to a new report from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Sixty percent of teens do not view these electronic texts as “writing.” They will use both computers and longhand to write depending on the circumstance.  Fifty-seven percent say the revise and edit more when they write using a computer. Sixty-three percent say using computers to write does not affect the quality of their writing.

A majority (73%) of teens say their personal electronic communications (email, IM) have no impact on the writing they do for school, and 77 percent said they have no impact on their own personal writing.

Sixty-four percent of teens say they accidentally use some informal writing styles used in personal electronic communication for the writing they do for school. (Some 25% have used emoticons in their school writing; 50% have used informal punctuation and grammar; 38% have used text shortcuts such as “LOL”).

“There is a raging national debate about the state of writing and how high-tech communication by teens might be affecting their ability to think and write,” noted Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew who co-authored a report on the findings titled Writing, Technology and Teens.

“Those on both sides of the issue will see supporting data here. There is clearly a big gap in the minds of teenagers between the ‘real’ writing they do for school and the texts they compose for their friends.”

YouTube accounted for 73.18 percent of all U.S. visits out of 68 online video sites for the month of March, according to Hitwise.

MySpaceTV had the second highest percentage of visits with 9.21 percent followed by Google Video with 4.06 percent. Yahoo Video received 2.16 percent of visits and Break.com rounded out the top five with 1.82 percent.

Online video accounted for 1.09 percent of all U.S. Internet visits in March, a decrease of 7 percent compared to March 2007. YouTube was the only video site in the top five that did not see a decrease in year- over- year growth, gaining 32 percent.

MySpaceTV saw its year- over- year growth slip 48 percent and Google Video dropped 52 percent. Yahoo Video decreased by 18 percent and Break.com dipped 16 percent.

Even with the decline in visits to video sites, the amount of time spent on the Web sites increased 7 percent. Hulu.com, which came out of beta the week ending March 15 was the 22nd most visited video site for March 2008 receiving .22 percent of visits.

“As online video becomes more mainstream with Internet users, the share referred traffic from the younger audiences of social networks is declining, shifting instead toward search”, said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise.

“Integration into search engine result pages through universal and blended search is increasing both the exposure of online videos and the importance of search as a traffic driver in the online video category.”

Digital sales of music accounted for 10 percent of the total global music market in 2007, up from 6 percent in 2006, according to In-Stat.

By 2012, digital music sales will represent 40 percent of all music purchased worldwide. Contributing to the growth include the global expansion of broadband, demand for single-track downloads and expanding music catalogs.

Another factor is the potential of growth in full-track downloads to mobile handsets outside of Japan, the main market for this kind of digital music format.

“Digital piracy continues to represent the primary challenge to online music service providers,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “Other obstacles still include the lack of interoperability between services and devices due to differing digital rights management (DRM) technologies, and weak consumer demand for subscription-based services.”

“Another potential market inhibitor is the fact that content owners, cellular service providers and handset manufacturers are increasing the amount of marketing and promotion for mobile music.”

Sales for online digital music reached $3.05 billion in 2007, up 48 percent from 2006. Revenue for global full track downloads will hit approximately $4.2 billion by 2012.

Apple’s iTunes has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the U.S. according to the NPD Group.

Apple now has 19 percent of the market and Wal-Mart has 15 percent including both online and brick-and-mortar sales.

Best Buy holds the third spot with 13 percent, followed by Amazon.com with six percent.

Physical CD sales have dropped dramatically as the music industry adapts to the digital world. NPD reports that close to half of all teens in the U.S. did not buy a single CD in 2007, up from 38 percent in 2006.

Apple said its iTunes Store has sold more than four billion songs, has 50 million customers, and has the largest music catalog with more than six million songs.

“We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We are thrilled, and would like to thank all of our customers for helping us reach this incredible milestone.”

Advertising spending for U.S. newspaper Web sites increased 18.8 percent to 3.2 billion in 2007, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America.

Spending on newspaper Web sites has now grown to account for 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad spending last year, an increase from 5.7 percent in 2006.

For last year’s fourth quarter, advertising spending on newspaper Web sites rose by 13.6 percent to $847 million compared to the same period a year ago. It was the thirteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for online newspaper advertising since the NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

“Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspaper publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms,” NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm said.

Advertising expenditures at newspapers and their Web sites totaled $12.6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2007, while spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $11.7 billion. That compared with total advertising expenditures of $14 billion and print ad spending of 13.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Getting mobile users to do anything besides talk is challenging. Users are more likely to interact with mobile multimedia if the cost is low and getting them to view mobile ads that pay for content is not easy according to a study from 3ple-Media.

Over half of respondents in the study said they would pass along ads to others in exchange for a variety of incentives. Free downloadable music tracks had the highest percentage of “quite likely” and “most likely” responses, second only to free talk time minutes.

When considering unsolicited mobile messages, 96 percent of respondents considered the messages as spam if they came from brands. Messages from operators were less likely to be viewed in the same way.

“There’s a debate within many mobile carriers: do they simply become a mobile IP connectivity provider, or also seek to ensure ARPU growth by becoming their subscriber’s mobile multimedia service provider?,” said StJohn Deakins, chief commercial officer for 3ple-Media.

Western Europe has the highest levels of text messaging usage and also has the lowest level of trust with 12 percent saying the trusted mobile advertising. The second lowest level of trust came from the Asia-Pacific region with 17 percent and is another leading region for text messaging use.

Making sure messages coming from mobile carriers instead of brands could help to improve those numbers, but the offer itself is also important.

A new study from comScore finds that non-newspaper readers are likely to be younger, and they are actually heavier than average online newsreaders, while heavy newspaper readers are more likely than average to read traditional print news brands online.

“That current generations are growing up getting their news online for free is an indicator that print circulations are likely to continue their decline,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore.

“But the Internet represents a significant opportunity to extend - and even improve upon - existing news brands and reach out to new consumers with living, breathing real-time content. Just because print circulations are declining does not mean there are fewer news consumers. In fact, just the opposite is true.”

Heavy print newspaper readers show a strong skew towards older age segments, while the non-newspaper reader segments skew younger. Thos who are 65 and older are 3 times more likely than average to read print editions of newspapers 6 times per week, while those between the ages of 18 to 24 are 38 percent more likely to not read print newspaper at all during an average week.

To better understand the news consumption habits of heavy, light and non-print newspaper reader segments, comScore looked at their tendency to visit several key news source online, using a selection of key print, TV and Internet news brands.

Based on their heavier than average visitation across most key news sites, those who do not read print versions of news papers are not necessarily light news consumers. In fact, they show a high tendency to visit the majority of sites, including print (e.g. LA Times), TV (e.g. FoxNews.com), and Internet (e.g. Topix.com) brands.

Both heavy print newspaper readers and the non-readers show similar heavy consumption of print news brands online, which indicates that print news sites are not just an extension of their offline brands but have a stand-alone brand presence online. For example, the Web sites for three of the largest U.S. city newspapers- the New York Times, LA Times and Chicago tribune show above average visitation from both heavy newspaper readers and non-readers.

TV news brands are also heavily visited by non-print readers. Non-readers were 29 percent more likely than the average Internet user to visit FoxNews.com and 15 percent more liely to visit CBS News Digital.

“Non-newspaper readers are a particularly important segment to reach because they are heavier than average news consumers - they just prefer to consume it in a digital format,” continued Flanagan.

“That they are receptive to print, TV, and Internet news brands indicates a broad opportunity online, but the brands that will ultimately win over these key news consumers are the ones that successfully integrate cutting edge digital content with high quality journalism.”

Segments were defined based on the number of days respondents said they read a print version of a newspaper in an average week, excluding the Sunday edition.

Heavy Newspaper Readers: 6 times per week
Medium Newspaper Readers: 3-5 times per week
Light Newspaper Readers: 1-2 times per week
Non Newspaper Readers: 0 times per week

A new JupiterResearch and PayPal study found that online shoppers value payment security and payment choice more than rewards when making purchases online.

More than half of the survey respondents consider the security of their financial information as the deciding factor when they make purchases online. An additional two thirds of shoppers feel more secure when they don’t have to provide any financial information, even on sites they trust.

“Today’s consumers demand security and convenience when they shop online, and merchants must answer with an extremely safe, fast and easy buying experience,” said Cliff Hopkins, senior director, PayPal merchant services.

“When merchants offer PayPal on their sites, they allow 141 million customers around the world to shop with peace of mind because they don’t have to share their financial information online.”

Other key findings from the study include 66 percent of shoppers favor online stores that offer multiple types of payment options. Sixty-one percent of online shoppers choose sites that offer both credit and debit card payment options and 55 percent consider payment methods they will use before they click on the checkout button.