The 10 things in advertising you need to know today
1. WPP's media investment arm GroupM has acquired a majority stake in London-based independent digital media agency Essence Digital, which counts brands such as Google, HP, and The Financial Times among its clients. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
2. The Groupon board has voted to oust cofounder Eric Lefkofsky from the CEO role. He will be replaced by COO Rich Williams.
3. Vice is creating its own TV channel called "Viceland." Vice is collaborating with A+E Networks to launch the channel next year.
4. Forbes sold itself last year, and now something very strange is happening. The Forbes family has sued Integrated Whale Media Investment, which bought a majority stake in Forbes Media last July, saying the Hong Kong-based investment group has failed repay money it borrowed from the family to finance the transaction.
5. Abercrombie & Fitch has debuted a toned-down new look. The brand's latest campaign stars Neelam Gill and ditches the hypersexuality the brand was notorious for.
6. Taco Bell has fired an executive accused of attacking an Uber driver. Benjamin Golden, Taco Bell's former head of mobile commerce, was arrested this weekend after a violent encounter with an Uber driver that was captured in a video the driver posted online.
7. There's an easy trick to get YouTube's ad-free version on your phone for $3 cheaper. All you have to do to get YouTube Red on your iPhone or iPad for just $9.99 per month is sign up using your desktop computer instead.
8. Larry Page wants to grow Alphabet to a scale never seen before. "Can we push the envelope of what's possible for a company that's innovative, a company with large resources, to really do things that matter, to innovate and for that to be a significant thing?" Page said in a rare public appearance at the Fortune Global Forum event on Monday.
9. Marissa Mayer has defended her famous ban on remote work. "I hope it's not my legacy," she said.
10. Online advertising fraudsters are turning to "ad injection scams," the Wall Street Journal reports. Malware is being used to inject unwanted ads into users' browsers, and infection rates are higher than those from bots, according to ad fraud detection firm WhiteOps.