The 10 things in advertising you need to know today
1. Amazon is suing more than 1,000 people who were offering to write fake reviews. "While small in number, these reviews can significantly undermine the trust that consumers and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers place in Amazon, which in turn tarnishes Amazon's brand," according to the complaint.
2. Pepsi has dropped its sponsorship of the Indian Premier League. The drinks company had originally signed a five-year deal with the cricket league, but pulled out after just three seasons, reportedly due to issues it had with the IPL's governance.
3. The new face of Revlon is a little-known Mexican TV host with a rags to riches story. Alejandra Espinoza used to work three jobs to help her parents pay the rent.
4. Twitter has hired the ad agency for Airbnb and Gatorade. TBWA\Chiat\Day is working on a number of projects with Twitter, including a campaign to show off its new Moments feature.
5. Pinterest is expected to do $169 million in sales this year. That's according to leaked documents obtained by TechCrunch.
6. Here's how Levi's is fighting back against the denim apocalypse. After observing consumers, chief product officer Karyn Hillman recently revamped Levi's style by getting creative with new fabric innovations and developing an appealing ad campaign staring Alicia Keys.
7. Steve Ballmer revealed on Friday that he has bought 4% of Twitter's shares. He also has a new Twitter account @steven_ballmer.
8. This is the internal system Google uses to grade its employees. From the time Google was a tiny startup, it has been using an internal grading system for employees call Objectives and Key Results, or OKR.
9. The Volkswagen emissions crisis could leave USA Cycling scrambling for a new title sponsor. Volkswagen is USA Cycling's biggest partner, and this is a contract-renewal year.
10. Facebook's carousel ads perform 10 times better than its regular ads, Digiday reports. A study from Kinetic Social found that 1% of users click through on carousel ads, compared with 0.1% on non-carousel ads.