Over the weekend, a few reports popped up that all seem to suggest one thing: The iPhone 5 launch is around the corner. Of course, as it’s customary to remind everyone, rumors are rumors, which is why they’re called rumors. …

A U.S. Senate report has revealed that retailers (a number of which you may already know and trust), have accepted as much as $792 million to share customers’ credit-card information with direct marketing companies. Could your card number have been one that was shared? Would you have known?

Multi-channel retailers increased their U.S. paid search spend in Q4 08 by 12 percent compared to Q4 07.

Consumers continued to convert online at a steady rate, although they spent 10 percent less on average per transaction compared with the prior year, according to a report from SearchIgnite.

The Internet plays an increasingly essential role in retail for brick and mortar retailers, even for purchases made in-store according to a new survey from Nielsen Online.

People who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick and mortar store, 80 percent bought from a store whose Web site they visited first. In addition 53 percent purchased from a retailer on whose Web site they had spent the most time.

It’s hard to know how the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) didn’t guess what it was getting into; contacting retailers isn’t the same as talking to random people on the street.  Still, a new study from the DMA revealed the interesting fact that 41 percent of its survey’s respondents don’t have brick-and-mortar stores.