What you need to know in advertising today
While State Street and Burger King took the top honors among the best advertisements of the year and passed with flying colors, Pepsi and Dove topped the list of the worst ads.
Check out the 10 Best Ads as well as the 10 Worst Ads of 2017.
In other news:
Brands are taking control of their media spending, and ad agencies should be alarmed. A study from the Association of National Advertisers found that 35% of respondents it surveyed have expanded their in-house programmatic media-buying capabilities, up from 14% in 2016.
A bombshell letter claims that Uber hacked into competitors' networks and wiretapped people at a hotel. The letter was written by a lawyer for a former Uber employee, who claims he was "unlawfully demoted" and later fired by the company.
The $13.7 billion Whole Foods buy has turned the world against Amazon - and we'll see the sparks fly next year. In one swoop, Amazon disrupted groceries, retail delivery, and even the enterprise IT market, and next year will be all about Amazon versus everyone else.
Vice Media has a clever plan for the end of net neutrality - it's building a renegade community-owned internet service. Motherboard is attempting to build its own community-based internet network in hopes of inspiring a nationwide grassroots movement.
Campbell Soup is buying snacks maker Snyder's-Lance for $4.87 billion. The company has pushed into other markets amid declining soup sales, with this acquisition being its sixth in five years.
Hershey is closing in on a deal to buy the maker of SkinnyPop. Hershey is close to buying Amplify, the SkinnyPop maker, for $1.6 billion, or $12 a share, according to CNBC.
Facebook admits that social media can be bad for you. In a blog post published on Friday, Facebook addressed a "hard question": "Is spending time on social media bad for us?"
Apple is making a new space TV series with the screenwriter known for "Battlestar Galactica" and "Star Trek." Ronald D. Moore is working on a series that "explores what would have happened if the global space race had never ended."
Bloomberg is launching the first round-the-clock streaming television service on Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reports. The service will focus on more general news than financial reporting, and is a part of Twitter's move to become a bigger player in the world of online video.
Condé Nast is set to announce a round of layoffs after it had a "terrible year," reports The New York Post. A rep from the company acknowledged impending job cuts, but said they were linked to the changing media landscape.
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