DJ’s CEO, Mark McInnes, has been encouraged by April and May sales figures that are so far on par with last year.

But he was not willing to say the downturn in the retail sector had come to an end.

The upmarket department store yesterday reported a 10.8 per cent decline in same-store sales in the quarter ended on April 25, compared with the same period the previous year.

DJs has maintained its guidance of zero to 5 per cent earnings growth both this year and next.

Mr McInnes said sales had plunged by 13 per cent in February and March but rebounded in April to a level equal to the previous April.

He said sales in May had so far performed equally as well as April, ahead of Mother's Day.

David Jones was one of the first retailers to feel the impact of the financial crisis last year. Its sales began to fall in mid-May, after Mother's Day, meaning that from now its figures will be compared to a lower base.

David Jones has continued to predict sales will fall by 3 to 5 per cent in the first half of next year before flattening in the second half.

 Some categories have performed more strongly than others, with cosmetics and younger apparel among the winners and homewares among the losers.

Mr McInnes said the Federal Government's latest stimulus package had boosted consumer confidence, as had recent gains in the sharemarket. "There is only a sense of doom and gloom that people can put up with for so long," he said.

David Jones has added 25,000 staff hours in May to keep pace with stronger trading conditions and will also boost marketing and inventory levels on a selective basis to ensure it can meet customer demand.

Among Google's revelations: breaks scheduled on the hour and half-hour retain far fewer viewers than those in between; some networks retain viewers during the ads far better than others; good and bad ads follow consistent performance patterns across networks; and people consistently avoid bad ads.

The biggest audience drop-off for the ads is during live sports, when ads come during scheduled breaks, such as half-time, and during time-outs.

The data are directionally consistent with Nielsen Media Research, as well as other sources of set-top-box data such as TNS, Rentrak, TRA and the cable networks themselves. "Second-by-second data can provide important learnings into how to program pods better, how to produce better content for programs and ads, how to schedule ads to optimize commercial ratings," said Debbie Reichig, a former NBCU and Court TV research exec who is president of In-Focus Media.

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