Country Media, Inc. Buys Three Newspapers From News Media Corp. (mediapost.com)

Consumers spent $211.5 billion online during the second quarter of 2020, with e-commerce sales up 31.8% from the previous quarter, according to figures released by the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. E-commerce sales in the quarter accounted for 16.1% of total retail sales. The data showed that total retail sales decreased 3.6% in the same period. Compared to the year-ago period, second quarter 2020 e-commerce sales increased increased 44.5% while total retail sales decreased 3.6%.

The U.S. ad market has fully recovered from the recession of 2020-21, with full calendar-year spending rising 18% vs. 2020, and 9% vs. 2019, according to a Standard Media Index analysis of the U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration with MediaPost indexing total U.S. ad spending from the pool of agency holding companies and independent agencies' actual media buys. A separate analysis of month-by-month data by MediaPost, however, reveals that the expansion has been decelerating through year-end 2021 (see related story). As robust as the recovery has been, SMI's analysis indicates it has been far from even across the major media.

Costco Wholesale Corporation reported net sales of $10.02 billion for the month of October, the four weeks ended October 29, 2017, an increase of 10.1 percent from $9.11 billion during the similar period last year. For the first eight weeks of fiscal year 2018 ended October 29, 2017, the Company reported net sales of $19.87 billion, an increase of 11.3 percent from $17.85 billion for the first eight weeks of fiscal 2017 ended October 23, 2016. *The U.S. comparable sales figure excluding the impacts from changes in gasoline prices and foreign exchange for the eight week YTD period was initially reported incorrectly as 8.1%. Click Read More below for additional information.