Advertising Industry Archive

Facebook is accused of advertising click fraud in a federal class-action lawsuit filed in California. The suit comes after June reports on TechCrunch that click fraud was rampant on Facebook. The lead plaintiff in the suit is Unified ECM, a maker of content management software in Beverly Hills, Calif. The company claims it uses its own software to track visits to its website that come from...

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In Q2 2009, Interpublic saw a cash decrease of $347 million, the company reported to the SEC. Revenues declined 20 percent to $1.5 billion; net income sank 70 percent to $21 million. But it is on the cashflow statements — the disclosures that measure actual movements of the agency network’s cash, as opposed to the credit notes and bills-payable that the company owns — where...

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Marty Garafalo, News America Marketing’s evp of trade, told a Michigan state court how his agency wrested the Ahold account from Floorgraphics, saying, “It cost a lot more than we wanted to spend.” He also described how his agency paid Kroger $25 million a year for the right to run ads in its supermarkets and he denied that CEO Paul Carlucci had described employees who wanted...

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Richard Lennox, JWT’s account chief on De Beers‘ “A Diamond is Forever” campaign, left the agency to become CMO at Zale Corp., the troubled discount gem retailer. On its face, the move seems a good one for Zales — the De Beers campaign is the best-known diamond advertising in the business. Zale’s could use some of that expertise. But the appointment has been...

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The TV commercial producer who filmed Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire at an infamous 1984 Pepsi ad shoot has sold Jackson’s hair to be turned into diamonds. Chicago’s LifeGem, which specializes in creating diamonds from individual hair samples, plans to sell a limited collection made from the King of Pop’s hair. The plan raises the question of whether...

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With Yahoo reporting revenues down 13 percent in Q2 2009 and Google recording a rise of just 3 percent, it’s worth asking … why? The recession, duh. But it’s less obvious than that. As late as last November, web-based ad agencies were reporting revenue rises. BNET advanced the argument that web advertising might skate through the recession unscathed. That turned out to be...

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News America Marketing CEO Paul “I will destroy you!” Carlucci woke up this morning with a headache: What to do about the $300 million verdict his company lost against rival newspaper coupon agency Valassis. In just seven months, Valassis has gone from a weak competitor whose stock was “worth zero dollars” and was nearly de-listed by the NYSE to having News America in...

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Nike says it will give back videos (see below) of LeBron James getting dunked on by college kid Jordan Crawford after the company confiscated them from two photographers at a recent skills academy. The confiscation led to a PR flap that made Nike — and Nike Basketball senior director Lynn Merritt (pictured) — look ridiculous. The videos emerged — inevitably — online in...

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Chelsea F.C. has disowned Fox Soccer Channel host Steven Cohen over his remarks about the death of 96 Liverpool F.C. fans in a stadium crush in 1989. It is the latest turn in an increasingly strange fight between Cohen, fans of Liverpool who have urged a boycott of him, and the advertisers who have departed his show. Cohen has repeatedly blamed Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster, in...

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Omnicom chief John Wren told investors today that he expects to see more layoffs at his agencies in the third quarter of the year. Omnicom reported its revenue decreased 17.4 percent to $2.8 billion and net income decreased 24 percent to $233.4 million. When asked by an analyst about “severance” (that’s a Wall Street euphemism for layoffs) Wren said there was more to come:...

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