High digital media usage and device ownership make affluents a tempting digital target

By any measure, affluent consumers in the US constitute a large market. Using a minimum of $100,000 in yearly household income as a threshold, an Ipsos Mendelsohn study last year put the number of affluent adults at 58.5 million. Their heavy use of the internet and mobile devices makes them a tempting target for digital marketing efforts.

US companies spend more on search than on any other online ad format. This year, eMarketer predicts, US search ad spending will account for almost half of total online advertising spending.

Findings from online ad management platform provider Marin Software suggest paid search advertisers could see better return on that investment this year than in years past. According to the company, the average US clickthrough rate on Google increased 48% in Q4 2011. Yahoo!/Bing saw a 44% increase during the same timeframe.

The widespread Internet blackout Wednesday, in which sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit went dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), seems to have influenced members of the U.S. Congress.

When's the last time you read your own website? No, seriously -- the last time you looked at every page, clicked every link and read every word on it.

Thanks to strong holiday sales, a low price point and upward consumer interest in tablet devices, Amazon’s first tablet product, Kindle Fire, debuted with satisfactory results. According to global market research firm IHS iSuppli, in the last three months of 2011, Amazon sold 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets, placing the brand in the second-place slot behind Apple in terms of tablet shipments.

Google+ Brand pages may have debuted just a few months ago, but many companies have already flocked to the social media platform to reach out to new fans. And it’s not just the big companies that are adopting brand pages: Google+ Group Product Manager Christian Oestlien says small businesses are also jumping on the Google+ band wagon.

Over the past eight months, Google has steadily released one revolutionary new feature after another. On March 17, the company announced a new version of Google Analytics. Up until this point, users could decide whether they preferred to stick with the old interface or switch to the new one. However, Google recently announced that the old version of GA will be turned off in January 2012.

If you’re not already familiar with the new version, take the next few weeks to get comfortable with it. To help you get started, let’s review the top 10 features of the new Google Analytics.

As you might have noticed, Twitter was down for about 90 minutes Saturday morning, with the service disruption affecting the entire Twitter site for the past hour.