Cloud-Based Email Services company Message Bus has launched Discover, a free reporting service that allows companies to see if their email systems are being abused or misused. Message Bus reports that the service has saved an ecommerce company over $1 million by revealing unauthorized senders.

List management company Worldata reports that the average price of aggregated email lists has dropped 4.35% over the same period a year ago, to $154 per thousand names. Postal list prices have also softened by 3.13% to $124 per thousand. 

Facebook has changed the way pages interact with their fans. The site is now reining in the visibility of each page's post among its audience of fans, and encouraging the use of promoted posts to reach them. This is after its push to marketers to try Facebook ads in order to acquire fans. The result of Facebook's closed messaging system is an audience marketers pay to acquire and then pay to reach. Read more at the Deliverability.com blog.

According to a new study by Econsultancy and Adobe, 54% of clients and 64% of agencies report that they carry out marketing attribution. This is up from a similar report in July 2012 where only 24% of marketers were engaged in marketing attribution, and a report in June that had the practice at only 8% adoption. Both agencies and clients cite the rise of mobile as the reason for the increased attribution scrutiny.

Experian has published its analysis of Black Friday traffic to the Top 500 online retailers and found a 7% lift over Black Friday in 2011. Black Friday traffic was only 1% higher than Thanksgiving Day traffic this year, proving correct the analysts who predicted holiday creep would result in a big retail Thanksgiving online. 

Facebook is drawing criticism for its new position on users' email permissions on the site. Currently Facebook users can restrict who on the site may send them messages through the site's email system, but Facebook has said it wants to eliminate that restriction and replace it with new filters for managing incoming messages. When asked if this change would open up Facebook users to unwanted spam a Facebook spokesperson said only that, "that the company carefully monitors user interaction and feedback to find ways to enhance the user experience."

Senator Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal for an email surveillance bill that would allow government agencies to search citizens' email accounts without a warrant. The bill came under fire from the American Civil Liberties Union, FreedomWorks and other organizations. 

Reports from Adobe, comScore, CouponCabin.com and Nielsen look at Cyber Monday from different angles, but all point towards a strong Cyber Monday for retailers. Consumer spending on Monday is expected to increase; consumer awareness of Cyber Monday is up from 48% to 61%; and more consumers plan to shop on Cyber Monday than on Black Friday.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, tablet ownership nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December 2011 and early January 2012, with iPads and other tablets being exceptionally popular under the tree. The same trend is expected this year. Nielsen surveyed consumers on their tablet purchase intentions and based on the results expects a surge in tablet ownership comparable to last Christmas.

Ragan Communications, a B2B publishing and training company, tested video emails against plain text and designed emails as part of a recent conference promotion. The video emails featured a screen shot of the video that linked to a landing page where the video played. Ragan found that open rates across the three message formats were consistent, but that the click-throughs of the video emails were twice as high as the text and designed emails.