The 10 things in advertising you need to know today
1. Facebook is shutting down LiveRail. The last remaining piece of the video ad tech company Facebook bought for between $400 million to $500 million dollars two years ago, LiveRail Private Exchange, is being discontinued. It comes in the same week Facebook announced it was also closing FBX, its desktop ad retargeting exchange.
2. There are two big changes coming to Facebook Audience Network, though. The network is being expanded so advertisers can target people who aren't on/logged into Facebook and Facebook's ad preferences settings will now also include options to opt-out of/organize Facebook Audience Network preferences.
3. Gawker CEO Nick Denton has written an open letter to billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who is attempting to put him out of business by secretly financing Hulk Hogan's high-profile lawsuit (and other cases) against the company. Denton is challenging Thiel to join him on a public debate on free speech.
4. Apple reportedly explored buying Time Warner. Apple's senior vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue, apparently suggested the idea at a meeting at the end of last year with Time Warner's head of corporate strategy, Olaf Olafsson, according to The Financial Times.
5. Snapchat raised $1.81 billion (£1.23 billion) in a new funding round. A TechCrunch report suggests the company is now valued at about $20 billion and generated $59 million in revenue in 2015.
6. Google won its copyright lawsuit against Oracle. The jury decided that Google's use of the disputed piece of code was "fair use."
7. Digiday remembers digital advertising pioneer Ari Bluman, who died this week aged 44. Bluman, who was most recently chief digital investment officer at GroupM, was praised by the company's chairman, Irwin Gotlieb, as "a pioneer and innovator."
8. Blippar, the visual-recognition and augmented reality company, has hired a top British diplomat as its COO. Danny Lopez is currently British consul general to New York and director general for UK trade and investment in the US.
9. These eye-tracking heatmaps reveal why Instagram's new icon could actually be a huge improvement. That's according to new analysis from Dragonfly, a design-analysis app created by Black Swan and researchers from Queen Mary University of London.
10. Roku's CEO Anthony Wood tells us why he thinks he can beat Google in the battle for your TV. When it comes to licensing, Roku is "neutral," and "not threatening," he said.