News

As the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)is set into action today in the European Union, brands and publishers everywhere will feel the effects. Just yesterday, Google invited members from four major publishing trade groups– Digital Content Next, European Publishers Council, News Media Alliance and the News Media Association—to meet with executives about the tech giant’s approach to data as the GDPR goes into effect. And while the GDPR won’t have the impact on U.S. brands and extensions of international companies it will in the EU,  its implementation could result in U.S. customers demanding similar actions.

Publicis Media’s Zenith unit has indeed upgraded its advertising outlook for 2018, albeit a modest one-tenth of a percentage point. Zenith now projects that global ad spending will expand 4.6% in 2018 — up from the 4.5% rate of growth it last projected in its December 2017 release.

Google is stepping up efforts to improve relations with news publishers with a $300m commitment that includes support for subscriptions and efforts to fight fake news. The launch of the Google News Initiative comes as Google and Facebook are facing criticism for their emergence as gatekeepers for information, their dominance of the digital advertising market and their role in the proliferation of false and misleading stories online in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit vote

After 51 years in print, Institutional Investor will scrap its paper edition and go digital-only after its April issue, the financial magazine announced this week

The IPA has welcomed comments from Unilever’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed to clean up the digital landscape, in which he has called the leading digital platforms and publishers to account.

Despite reporting a healthy 20% increase in net income for 2017 to $15.9bn (£10.5bn), Facebook reported declines in user numbers and usage time

UK ad spend will only grow by 0.3% in 2018 according to the Institute Practitioners in Advertising’s (IPA) latest Bellwether report

Facebook is planning sweeping changes to its newsfeed, as Mark Zuckerberg pledges to help users have more meaningful social interactions on the platform by prioritising posts from friends and family at the expense of those from publishers. Mr Zuckerberg said users would see less public content “like posts from businesses, brands and media”. This content would be prioritised based on whether it encouraged interactions between people, rather than “passively read”.

Amazon reports its voice device Echo was its top seller over the holidays. Hearst is hoping to plant its feet firmly in technology’s future, too. The company has been experimenting successfully with content on both the Echo and Google Home.

UK industry events ad:tech London and Technology for Marketing (TFM) have joined forces to form the country’s largest marketplace for advertising and marketing technology at Olympia, London on 26-27 September

The death of magazines has been overplayed, according to a leading media agency, despite a torrid year that has featured the British title Glamour ending its monthly print run and Rolling Stone appealing for a deep-pocketed buyer.

Norwegian print newspaper VG, a Schibsted brand, has a history of launching successful and lucrative spin off companies. In 2013 it launched the web TV channel VGTV, and since then has seen its audience and its revenues reach impressive figures

In a sobering assessment of the future of the news industry, the head of the Times and Sunday Times predicts a future where “no more than 10” global English-language news brands will survive by paid subscription models

The Financial Times claims to have exceeded 900,000 ‘paying readers’ for the first time. The title has seen a surge in digital subscribers since April when it revealed the total stood at 650,000, up 14 per cent year on year. At the time it said Brexit and the US presidential election appeared to have particularly fuelled subscriber growth

Facebook has become the “richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms”, according to Guardian editor Katharine Viner

It has been a miserable year for the holding companies that own the world’s largest advertising groups, with shares in WPP, Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic Group all down sharply over the past 12 months. Consumer groups are rethinking their marketing spending while unease about the effectiveness of digital advertising has damped investor spirits. With advertising’s Mad Men in danger of becoming sad men, what future is there for the holding companies? Their business model, which has traditionally brought together creative agencies, media buying and planning groups, is under attack on multiple fronts.

Magazine media is finding a number of pioneering use cases for ambient computing

Press release: Haymarket, the international media group, has filed annual accounts showing a 26 per cent rise in operating profits to £4.3m.

According to Seeking Alpha Informa is currently undervalued compared to its closest peer group by about 30% and may re-rate in the next few months. The company has made a significant business overhaul in the past few years and is now very well positioned to grow sustainably going forward. Despite this profile, its valuation seems to be […]

Amazon is making good on its promise to eat advertising. In its third-quarter earnings report today, the e-commerce giant said it saw “other” revenue, which is mostly composed of ad sales (and to a much smaller extent, its credit card business), grow 58 percent year over year to $1.12 billion. That’s a slight increase from the growth rate in the prior second quarter, when it grew 53 percent year over year