Email volume overall increased 5% in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Experian Marketing Services 2012 Q4 email benchmark report.

The rapid expansion of Latin America’s Internet audience—and the potential for the region boasting 359 million Internet users by 2015.

55% of marketers from around the world plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, according to results from a Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) survey conducted by Econsultancy.

Majority of marketers (39% overall) plan to increase their digital budgets without increasing overall marketing spend, effectively reallocating existing budgets into digital channels.

[In Brazil], [m]obile penetration is expected to reach 140% in 2012 compared to fixed-line penetration of 22%, placing mobile as the key provider of all types of telecommunications services to the majority of consumers.

Those mobile phone users reported storing large amounts of data on their phones that they consider private, including contact information (82% of users), text messages (78%), photos and videos (75%), and voicemail messages (74%). They appeared especially cautious about passwords, and just 27% store passwords for websites and apps.

Location tracking may be key to targeted marketing, but mobile phone users treat location as a privacy concern. 19% of mobile phone owners have turned off the location tracking feature because they were concerned that other individuals or companies could access that information. That figure rises among smartphone owners, 30% of whom have turned off location tracking.

Another common security measure, as revealed in a July 2012 UC Berkeley study, is simply holding a mobile phone “close to the vest.” 9 in 10 respondents reported they would definitely not allow a stranger to borrow their mobile phones, and only half said definitely would allow a spouse or other close family member to borrow their phones.

Just 11% of B2B lead generation marketers describe their marketing as highly effective and efficient.

Of companies using marketing automation and ROI metrics, 69 percent reported an increase in total marketing revenue contribution.

China will become the third-largest ad market behind the U.S. and Japan in 2012, displacing Germany.

Social networking and blogs were more popular in the U.S. with 21.3% participating, followed by Japan at 17.0% and Europe at 14.7%.

U.S. marketers spend an average of 2.5% of their total company revenue on digital marketing activities, according to a new report by Gartner Inc.U.S. marketers spend an average of 2.5% of their total company revenue on digital marketing activities, according to a new report by Gartner Inc.

According to Duke University's, The CMO Survey, digital marketing spending is forecast to grow by 10.2%, a slower rate than the 11.5% increase forecast in August 2012, but a healthy rate nonetheless.

CMOs are projecting increased budgets across a number of other areas. They’re expecting to spend more on new product (8%, down from 9.4% in August 2012) and service (5.8%, down from 6.5%) introductions, while also forecasting an 8.1% increase in budgets devoted to customer relationship management (down from 9%), and 6.8% more spending on brand building (down from 7.5%).

Overall marketing spending is expected to grow by 6.1% over the next 12 months, slightly slower than the 6.4% growth forecast from August 2012. Currently, marketing budgets are reported to account for an average of 10.6% of firm budgets, down from 11.4% in August 2012.