Tim Arnold pointed to one such success: his own advertisement for GoDaddy.com in the 2005 Super Bowl. The ad generated 5 million Web hits in 48 hours and doubled the company’s market share in the months that followed. Writes Arnold, “It was an outrageous spot that arguably stayed on the right side of the line of good taste and political impropriety. Viewers gave it mixed reviews, but GoDaddy’s business went through the roof as a result of it.”
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/super-bowl-a...
FTC puts proceeds of settlement into a "consumer restitution" or "consumer redress" fund. Consumers who were affected by the bad actors, can claim their money back via a separate company which administers that fund. After a period of time, once all affected customers have had time to claim their restitution (usually 12-24 months), then any remaining money left in the "redress" or "restitution" fund goes into the FTCs coffers. I can't quickly find stats on what percentage is usually claimed by consumers. But last time I researched this, it was pretty low with something like <10% of affected consumers actually claiming their restitution and 90% going back into FTC budget.
I had a "150-in-One" breadboarding kit from Radio Shack when I was 9 years old and greatly enjoyed it. This seems similar, but using the monthly subscription model.
I agree - the notion that LendingClub is P2P is mostly PR hype. Sure an individual can put some capital to work. But most of their capital as pointed out above comes from institutions (mostly hedge funds). I had heard that 95% of their capital was institutional but I can't find a quote on that. P2P gets fantastic press tho and which in turn drives down new borrower acquisition cost.