Levick has just become Spotify’s chief advertising officer, according to his LinkedIn profile, and a source has confirmed. Initially, it looked like Levick had become chief revenue officer, but turns out his role relates to advertising, based in New York.

Rumours swirling that the Amazon Payments division is testing an NFC platform, the obvious question is how would the online retail giant compete against the likes of Visa & MasterCard

Commissioned by RTB platform provider Admeld, the market researcher issued a report today titled RTB Hits The Mainstream, which suggests 2011 will be a "banner year" for real time exchange-based buying following its "coming of age" in 2010.

The deal will see Nokia adopt Windows Phone as its “principle smartphone strategy”

AdReady: In short, 2011 looks to be a great year for display! As new and better technologies emerge and more and more advertisers become equipped to succeed in display, the display ad business will continue to grow and shatter expectations

The prospect of an easy-to-use browser-based opt-out for behavioral advertising advanced this week with Mozilla's release of a preliminary version of a do-not-track header.

Display advertising will make a leap this year in an effort to keep up with changes across the Internet. Microsoft and Vibrant stepped up innovations, each separately releasing new ad units and technology this week. 

Bizo is not too keen on the proposed options from the main browser companies.

Digital TV broadcaster Sky has ten million customers following a "strong" first half of its 2010-11 financial year, with high-definition (HD) TV one of the areas to experience growth.

Nielsen reported increases in general ad recall, brand recall, message recall, and ad likability for TV plus premium online video versus TV alone. In other words, those consumers who saw a commercial spot embedded in a TV program online demonstrated a more favorable response to that ad than those who saw the same ad on TV alone.

Thinkbox predicts that the four-hour-a-day mark "might be the peak" amount of live TV people will watch, although the statistics do not take into account programming viewed on devices other than traditional TV sets.

Far from making the world go blind, this opt-out flag will allow publishers to see who their users are and potentially change their sites to deliver a different web experience for certain users

Online ad self-regulation is spurring new services – and incremental revenue for the firms that offer them. TRUSTe is the latest to receive certification by the Digital Advertising Alliance – the body overseeing the behavioral advertising self-regulatory program – to enable an icon users can expect to see more of in display ads in the coming months.

Facebook has acquired Rel8tion and the employees of the nine-month-old Seattle-based start-up, which has been working under the radar to develop a hyper-local mobile advertising service.

To enable closed loop feedback for audience segmentation, BlueKai recently acquired TrackSimple, a Seattle-based data analytics company that provides reporting, analysis and prediction services to media companies

The Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Ecosystem map identifying the main players/platforms and their role in facilitating RTB transactions is included in the report and is also available for download separately.

Data Privacy Day is an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information.

Facebook has announced that it is introducing Sponsored Stories – essentially things relating to brands that you have written, amplified by the brands, and placed in the right hand side ad box by Facebook.

In future, successful marketing campaigns will need to focus on three key things – relevance, response and restraint, the report says

Ads with social content are more effective in recall, awareness and intent. 

There were 381,576,305 check-ins last year worldwide, with the record for a single event being 30,525 at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. in October.

The first iPhone app enabling people to receive train tickets directly to their iPhone has launched in the UK.

“The challenge that we as an industry have to address in the short term is scaling the self-compliance program, and this initiative with Collective is a great step in that direction,” said Scott Meyer, Founder and CEO, Evidon

"It's unlikely we'll see any big privacy legislation come out of Congress" this year, said John Nicholson, senior associate at Pillsbury Law and head of the firm's privacy and data protection practice, based in D.C.

Mashable said it received a confidential fact sheet from a source inside Google that detailed the firm's new group buying service, which is similar to Groupon and LivingSocial

We’re now looking at digital display as an ’always on’ channel, rather than as [intermittent] campaign activity.

TGI's James McCombe says from a marketing point of view mobile Twitterers are an attractive target in their own right.

Bonnier announced today that it is joining forces with top ad shop CP+B to develop next-generation advertising formats for tablet magazines. The move addresses a fundamental need in the industry: all-new advertising for all-new advertising platforms.

Most buyers within agencies are still waiting for this holy grail of audience intelligence at scale. Such abundance would include being able to access unique audience profiles and do things like layer Prism data, for truly applicable intelligence output.

Rocket Fuel  today launched Video Booster an advanced video targeting and optimization solution that delivers the intelligence and accuracy of highly targeted, data-driven ads with the impact of video.

There's no language at all endorsing any kind of "opt-in" clause, which would force users to give their consent explicitly before cookies are placed on their computer. "Settings of a browser or another application" are sufficient, the document says.

Facebook is expected to make over $4 billion (£2.5 billion) from advertising in 2011, it has been estimated by eMarketer.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about the issues in the RTB space, particularly from publishers. Many publishers are jumping in with both feet, but a large number are still in wait-and-see mode, and have big concerns that they want addressed before they enter the fray. Some of these concerns are not areas that should cause concern, and there are other issues that they should probably care about — but that aren't even on their radars.

A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. "vision statement" shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities?

A name change for the folks running better advertising.

Like social networking on mobile devices, location-based services are still in their infancy. eMarketer projects the number of mobile social network users will more than double between 2010 and 2015, and adoption of location-based services will rise with it.

Despite years of big growth and even bigger hype, the network-delivered rental and sale of videos continued to represent only a small portion of the U.S. home video entertainment market in 2010, as consumers flocked to buy and rent Blu-ray discs, according to Screen Digest, now part of IHS

According to Juniper Research, marketers spent $87 million worldwide advertising on mobile games last year. By 2015, the amount will be 10 times greater, at nearly $900 million.

Video ad network WebTV Enterprise saw ad revenues triple last year, according to its latest results. It saw a 244% rise in video ad revenue in 2010 compared to the previous year.

If Tracking Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Tracking, so says ClickZ

ITV has restructured its commercial and online division as part of its strategy to develop premium content and deliver it across multiple platforms.

Ad spending on the most controversial form of targeting—behavioral targeting—is expected to rise by double digits in 2011. So how can marketers tread safely without turning off their audience?

The Office of Fair Trading is warning companies that sign up celebs to promote their products that they must be clear about their methods.

Spending on advertising will grow by 4.5% in 2011, double the rate of the previous year, according to ZenithOptimedia, an ad agency. This will be led by online advertising which will increase by 16%.

Display advertising will lead the digital industry’s recovery from recession in 2011, with confidence in brand advertising online seeing display’s ad spend growth rate overtaking search’s.

20 facts of 2010: A snapshop of life in the UK: Nearly a quarter of the UK population has no internet access, but one in ten can surf the web on their phone, according to one of the largest surveys examining life in the UK.

Real-time bidding is helping to propel the online ad market, as publishers and advertisers find more efficient ways to monetize inventory. But there may be a long way to go before media buyers and publishers are making the most of those efficiencies.

20 facts of 2010: A snapshop of life in the UK: Nearly a quarter of the UK population has no internet access, but one in ten can surf the web on their phone, according to one of the largest surveys examining life in the UK.

Real-time bidding is helping to propel the online ad market, as publishers and advertisers find more efficient ways to monetize inventory. But there may be a long way to go before media buyers and publishers are making the most of those efficiencies.

What can a publisher – and more specifically, ad operations – do to ensure that RTB will help grow the business?

Time to reject "audiences vs. content" as a false choice? Start a three-part quality movement in the exchange space?

Juniper Research forecasts that by 2015, adspend on this platform will reach $894 million, up from $87 million in 2010, fuelled by increasing brand interest in mobile as an advertising channel, and apps – of which games are the dominant sector.

The key market driver for PVR products is likely to be digital terrestrial television set top boxes that integrate PVR capabilities. However, PVR products will be overtaken by internet-enabled television sets.  Around 350 million connected TVs are expected to be sold worldwide by 2015, according to Parks Associates.

Consumer behavior has shifted, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that online video advertising is an effective channel for reaching consumers. Yet, online video represents only 7 percent of the entire ad market, according to eMarketer, which suggests that advertisers are still trying to figure out how to access online viewers successfully with the media buying dollars traditionally used for broadcast.

Consumer behavior has shifted, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that online video advertising is an effective channel for reaching consumers. Yet, online video represents only 7 percent of the entire ad market, according to eMarketer, which suggests that advertisers are still trying to figure out how to access online viewers successfully with the media buying dollars traditionally used for broadcast.

Who just happens to be sitting on the best data? Publishers!

In 2010, 65% of people younger than 30 cited the Internet as their go-to source for news, nearly doubling from 34% in 2007

Chris Maples with some interesting predictions for 2011. I agree with many of them.

Display advertising will lead the digital industry’s recovery from recession in 2011, with confidence in brand advertising online seeing display’s ad spend growth rate overtaking search’s.

One future for publisher's to better manage customer & advertising relationships is for them to buy up – or a least invest – in better technology. This might be the first signal that more publishers will be doing it.

The alpha release of Privacy Icons aims to usher in a new era of understanding of how users' personally identifiable data – including name, IP address or email – is being used, and often exploited, by publishers and third-party companies.

A new content distribution network built by BT will ensure greater bandwidth for users wanting to watch online video without disruption, even during peak online usage times. BT Retail is currently using the wholesale service called Content Connect to supply the company's television customers with the BBC iPlayer.

Ultimately, publishers are the ones that'll be the most advantaged in a move towards transparency. They have a first party relationship with the end user and a history of doing user data relationships.

Last year was a transitional year for most of the industry and now the traction of these changes are likely to take hold on the cold hard surface of consumer engagement.

Smaller advertisers are finally joining the ad recovery, which was originally dominated by the biggest players in automobiles and packaged goods, suggesting more robust and reliable growth ahead.

Advertising will more closely integrate with social outlets. As opposed to the world broadcast, which means to reach a wide audience, which is far more costly, it will transition to narrow-castin

After three years of intense R&D — and even more intense M&A — the company now owns large swaths of display media's plumbing. It's on pace to capture $2.5 billion in display ad revenue in 2010, making short work of CEO Eric Schmidt's 2009 pledge to turn display into Google's "next billion-dollar business." But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

A poster advertising the PlayStation Move has been banned in the U.K. after the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints that it was too violent.

Develop your ad server to meet the needs of your application. Don’t develop your application to meet the needs of your ad server.

"You can't tell me the delivery of a piece of content is going to be that much better if you know everything about my life; it's all about moderation."

Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) and DIRECTV, the world’s most popular video service, have an agreement in principle for SMG to assist DIRECTV in delivering scaled, household-addressable advertising to customer households with DVRs.

The FTC proposal would stop all that. Trouble is, while the commission may have consumers' best interests at heart (or be motivated by desire to toss a feel-good political football in a transition election year), the idea has two huge problems:
1. It won't stop online ads. While Do Not Call lists kept telemarketers at bay, you'll still see tons of banners and videos everywhere online. They'll simply be less relevant.
2. Do Not Track will send billions of dollars to the big online publishers, hurting the little sites you might find most interesting.

Forrester takes pains to note it’s not predicting the demise of TV. In fact, the amount of time spent watching TV has remained stable over the past five years. During that same time, however, time spent on the Web has risen 121 percent. The biggest losers in comparison to the Web are: radio (down 15 percent), newspapers (down 26 percent) and magazines (down 18 percent).

Although privacy advocates may welcome the report as a gift, many portions, if adopted by policymakers, will prove to be a lump of coal to the advertising industry, website owners, and ultimately, to consumers who benefit from the free content, personalized services, and useful ads made possible by targeted advertising technologies.

EA’s general manager of free-to-play gaming has said that in-game advertising is in decline and microtransactions are proving to be much more lucrative