RIAA: We'll stop suing downloaders to work with ISPs
Five years after the Recording Industry Association of America began suing music file sharers, and after loads of media coverage of the ensuing suits, the industry group said Friday that it will no longer be pursuing the policy. The group that represents the U.S. recording industry has sued some 35,000 since 2003 for sharing songs online, including single mothers, teens and even a dead person. Instead, the group is working with several major U.S. internet service providers to send warnings to illegal file sharers and potentially cut off their internet access if they don’t stop. The RIAA says that it decided to stop being so litigious because the average lawsuit settlement was around $3,500, which didn’t cover the legal costs of bringing the suit to court. However, the group claims its lawsuits raised awareness of music piracy and helped propel legitimate sales of digital music online, which were up 28 percent last year to more than $1 billion.
ComScore: Online spending off 1 percent this year
Despite heavy online spending in the days leading up to Christmas, virtual shoppers spent 1 percent less compared with the same time period as last year. Online measuring company comScore’s tracking of holiday season ecommerce spending from Thanksgiving through Dec. 19 found that $24.03 billion has been spent on the web. This year’s holiday season has seen average online spending per day of $643 million, 5 percent higher than last year. However, the core holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year is 16 percent shorter than last year, which, combined with a struggling economy, has led to the decrease in spending, according to comScore. The fastest-growing product categories between Dec. 1-19 were sports and fitness, up 31 percent, books and magazines, up 18 percent, and video games, consoles and accessories, up 17 percent.
Miss Santa this year? Give him a call on your cell.
Didn’t have time to make it to the mall to visit Santa this year? There’s still time for your kids to talk to the Jolly Old Elf thanks to SmartReply, a provider of voice and mobile marketing. Parents can text “XMAS” to 50799 as part of SmartReply’s TXT2SANTA event and follow the instructions in order to speak to Santa. Smart Reply is using the holidays to promote mobile marketing as an option for businesses struggling to promote their product or service. It cites a survey by the Direct Marketing Association’s mobile marketing arm in July 2008 that SMS campaigns were the most successful mobile ad medium, with 70 percent of those surveyed having responded to a marketing text message compared with only 41 percent responding to a survey and 30 percent to email offers.
Study: YouTube users more engaged in advertising
YouTube may not quite have cracked the advertising model yet, but a new study may give it a boost. The study found that folks on YouTube are more engaged in advertising than TV viewers are – 1.5 times more engaged, in fact. The independent study, which was released by YouTube and done in partnership with other companies including MindShare and Motorola, using eye tracking technology and unique biometrics data, found that an ad on YouTube can have a 14 percent higher impact on ad recall and attribution than watching the same ad on TV. The study also found that watching a silent ad on YouTube as well as a TV ad boosted recall.
