Consumer watchdog groups, CCFC, Public Citizen, and the Center for Digital Democracy, are again targeting the deceptive advertising practices of "influencer marketing" in a new complaint filed with the FTC on Friday. The groups specifically call out Google's YouTube and YouTube Kids, Disney-owned Maker Studios, Dreamworks' AwesomenessTV and others, as being involved… Read MoreSource: TechCrunch
Research shows the flurry of M&A in the advertising industry is nowhere near slowing. In Q1 2016 alone there were 72 merger and acquisition events among advertising technology, marketing technology and digital media firms. It's clear much of this deal activity is about industry consolidation to bolster or establish audience, round out tech stack or neutralize potential threats.
Apple has just released iOS 10.1 with a Portrait mode for the iPhone 7 Plus. This feature takes advantage of the two lenses to generate background blur and make your photos look more like photos coming from a DSLR camera. While the feature is still in beta even after the release of iOS 10.1, it already works quite well. Our own Yashad Kulkarni (Romain is writing this) has been playing with…
Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management platform founded by James Carpenter and Richard Carter, who both previously founded Adstream, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. It follows a £1 million "friends and family" round in May this year.
While many people are arguing that the proposed $85 billion AT&T and Time Warner deal would be bad for consumer choice, billionaire Mark Cuban has a contrarian viewpoint. The merger would lead to "more competition" he tells TechCrunch. Cuban, who made his money through a different media acquisition, thinks the combination would help challenge the tech giants like Facebook,…