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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 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

Sales of smartphones to U.S. customers hit 9 million units from January through July 2008 compared to the same time period last year, representing an 84 percent increase.Overall handset sales and revenues dipped in the U.S., but smartphone revenue increased 71 percent hitting almost $4.7 billion. With the launch of Apple's iPhone in July, Apple took the second spot in smartphone sales, behind RIM.