In 2011, we saw Market Insights Professionals take their first steps on the path to adding social to their research mix, measuring their contribution to the organization, fostering internal collaboration, and building influence.

Near field communication (NFC) allows consumers to use their mobile and custom devices to directly interact with almost any real-world object such as posters, clothes, and shop windows. The allure of NFC is its simplicity: Users tap their device (most likely a mobile) on the object of interest and are immediately provided with either media or a campaign message and action. This report provides interactive marketers an appreciation of how NFC differs from other offline technologies, an outline of campaign techniques, and a tool kit to help them approach their construction of high-impact NFC campaigns.

CCP Games, a massive multiplayer online game provider, knew that its existing approach with key channels like display was suboptimized and that it could drive more efficient customer acquisition if it got smarter about media mix and management of its first-party data. For help it turned to X Plus One, a demand-side platform (DSP) with extensive data management platform (DMP) capabilities. Together they spent 2010 and 2011 moving CCP from a messy, duplicative approach rife with waste to a lean, focused, optimized media mix, and in 2012 aim to leverage CCP's existing data assets for highly efficient cross-sell. Along the way, they're co-creating a universal view of "the truth," improving CCP's internal processes and communications.

Forrester partnered with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) to better understand marketers' current attitudes toward TV and digital video advertising. Marketers have regained their confidence in TV advertising since the recession and look forward to the promise of applying targeting and segmentation to their TV campaigns. This report explains the perspectives of the largest consumer and business marketers and outlines some of the key trends marketers need to watch as TV continues to evolve as a media platform.

Online retail sales will continue to outperform overall retail sales figures in terms of percentage growth for many years to come in Europe. As the Web becomes an increasingly mainstream part of the lives of many Europeans, eBusiness professionals must adapt their strategies to accommodate consumers who are finding information about products and services across multiple touchpoints. This report outlines the five-year growth projections for online retail sales across 17 European countries in total and provides specific details for major markets like the UK, France, and Germany.

eCommerce sales continue to grow rapidly, having topped $200 billion in 2011. Forrester expects that online sales will grow from 7% of overall retail sales to close to 9% by 2016. Key drivers of this growth include consumers' greater comfort level with purchasing various categories online, broader web shopping capabilities with mobile and tablet devices, innovative new shopping models that divert spend away from physical stores (e.g., flash sales, subscription models), online loyalty programs, and aggressive promotional offers from web retailers.

Adoption of social media among investors is relatively high, but many investment firms have been slow to embrace the medium. The Vanguard Group has had success by using social media to engage with and learn from its clients and now feels that it has a better sense of what clients want to hear from Vanguard. In the past five months, its Facebook and Twitter audience has nearly tripled. By using the people, objectives, strategy, and technology (POST) methodology, other investment firms could enjoy similar success.