Eight percent of consumers in the UK, France, Germany and the U.S. have admitted to downloading content illegally from file sharing websites, according to a new study by Futuresource Consulting.
When looking only at the downloader segment, the study found that 15 percent of all downloaders admitted to obtaining video content illegally, with France taking the lead at 25 percent.
Nearly 70 Percent Of U.S. Households Play Video Games
The number of American households that play computer or video games has risen to 68 percent, a three percent increase over 2008, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a group that represents U.S. computer and video game publishers.
"This is the new golden age of entertainment software. Our products are now being enjoyed by over two-thirds of Americans," said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA.
Online Newspaper Traffic Up 10 Percent
While the newspaper industry continues to struggle, one bright spot is online visitors to newspaper Web sites increased 10.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 attracting an average of 73.3 million monthly unique visitors, according to a report from Nielsen Online commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America.
Google Test Shows 300 Percent ROI
Kelly Wall of Google’s Retail Team was spare on data in a report about an experiment to see how online advertising affected offline, in-store sales, probably because it took some convincing to get the participants to share their sales data to begin with. So we’ll have to take Kelly’s word for it that one retail client saw a 300 percent return on investment.
Online Radio Grows 37 Percent
Online music radio and track play listening hours increased 37.6 percent to 6.67 billion in 2008, while in-stream audio sold against ad -supported cumulative hours rose by 46.1 percent to $74 million over the 12 month period, according to a report by AccuStream iMedia Research.
The report, "Online Music Spins and Media Spend: 2003 – 2012," found that AOL’s Shoutcast platform remains the most popular destination for online music, accounting for 52.5 percent of total time spent listening, followed by Clear Channel sites with 7.8 percent.
Digital Music Sales Up 25 Percent
The digital music business saw solid global expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 percent to $3.7 billion, according to a report from the industry trade group IFPI.Digital platforms now account for around 20 percent of recorded music sales, up from 15 percent in 2007. Despite this the music industry is still plagued by large amounts of unlicensed music distributed online. The IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally shared in 2008, giving piracy a rate of about 95 percent.
Online Holiday Spending Up 7 Percent
Online holiday spending continues to be the one bright spot in the woeful economy, according to a new report from comScore.For the holiday season through December 7, $15.63 billion has been spent online, about the same level compared to the same period last year. During the first week since Cyber Monday (December 1-December 7), sales totaled $4.45 billion, up 7 percent over a year ago.
Online Holiday Spending Up 9 Percent
Online holiday spending has now reached the same levels as last year thanks to Cyber Monday and the corresponding Tuesday, according to comScore.For the holiday season through December 5, $14.92 billion has been spent online, about the same amount compared to the same period last year.
Online Retail Spending Grows 1 Percent
Online retail spending in October grew by only 1 percent compared to October 2007, representing the lowest monthly growth rate since 2001, according to a report from comScore who began tracking ecommerce seven years ago.The report said that the softness in online retail spending was due in part by negative spending growth in households earning less than $50,000 a year.
Mobile Search Growth Up 68 Percent
Mobile search is increasing in both popularity and frequency in the U.S. and Western Europe.In June 2008, 20.8 million U.S. mobile subscribers and 4.5 million European mobile subscribers used mobile search during the month, an increase of 68 and 38 percent from June 2007, respectively, according to comScore M: Metrics.The U.K. had the highest penetration of mobile subscribers using search at 9.5 percent, trailed closely by the U.S. at 9.2 percent.