McDonald's
People aren't happy with McDonald's for referencing 9/11 in its latest ad.
1. German retailers Aldi and Lidl are pummeling the major UK supermarkets. The latest data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that only Aldi, Lidl and upmarket grocer Waitrose posted year-on-year sales growth over the festive period.
2. There's a new theory on why Google might benefit from withholding AdSense payments from publishers. One website owner - who claims his site earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through AdSense only for Google to suddenly reverse his payment back to his advertisers - suggests such reversals form the same function as "kickbacks" to advertisers, encouraging them to spend more.
3. McDonald's is being slammed for using tragedies such as 9/11 and the Boston bombings to sell burgers in its latest brand ad. Critics of the ad have called it exploitative and tasteless. The Washington Post described the ad as "tone deaf" and a "disarming minute of mushy corporate propaganda."
4. Teads - the video adtech company that merged with Ebuzzing last year - has raised a $30.2 million funding round. The company has secured £51.4 million ($77.6 million) in financing to date and says it generated £63.5 million ($96.3 million) in revenue last year, up 65% on 2013.
5. Fresh from announcing a $377 million cost-cutting plan, Tesco has launched a Google Glass app. The Tesco Grocery Glass app allows users to browse items and add them to their basket via the headset's voice commands or scan barcodes using the in-built camera.
6. Marissa Mayer once revealed a "dirty little secret" about Google's famous "20% time." This policy supposedly allowed Googlers to spend 20% of their working time on personal projects, but Mayer said it's really "120% time…stuff you've got to do beyond your regular job."
7. ExchangeWire has provided a good analysis into the history of the Right Media ad exchange, which Yahoo shut down earlier this week. ExchangeWire's CEO Ciaran O'Kane has also shared 13 adtech predictions for 2015.
8. ESPN's College Football Playoff National Championship scored more than 33 million viewers on Monday, AdAge reports. That surpassed the previous cable audience record set by the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day, which averaged 28.3 million viewers.
9. Mail giant Pitney Bowes has unveiled a new logo, The Wall Street Journal's CMO Today reports. The company says its new curvaceous logo emphasizes its digital savvy.
10. Bacardi has promoted Dmitry "Dima" Ivanov to its chief marketing officer and president of global brands position, Marketing Week reports. Ivanov was previously senior global category director of rums.