Anna Gronewold

Brands Brief: Amazon Said to Be Building Robots for Home Use

By Brian Yermal Top Stories Amazon.com Inc. is reportedly pursuing plans to build robots to be used in households, according to people familiar with the project, codenamed “Vesta,” but it is not clear what functions the robots would perform. Sources said the prototypes could act like a mobile Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, and feature advanced cameras […]

Brands Brief: Week in Review & What’s Ahead

By Anna Gronewold Week in Review Facebook  Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers in a joint Senate hearing that he’s sorry the company did not do enough to prevent the platform from being used for harm following revelations that data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly collected personal information from up to 87 million Facebook users. […]

Brands Brief: FTC Expands Settlement With Uber to Include 2016 Data Breach

By Anna Gronewold Top Stories Acting Federal Trade Commission chair Maureen Ohlhausen announced the FTC has expanded last year’s settlement with Uber Technologies Inc. to include a 2016 data breach that exposed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of more than 20 million people who use the ride-hailing service in the United States. Under the […]

Brands Brief: Analysis Finds Users Spent Less Time With Facebook in January

By Anna Gronewold Out today: The latest editions of Morning Consult’s Senator Approval Rankings and Governor Approval Rankings Top Stories U.S. consumers spent less time on Facebook, its Messenger app and Instagram, but more on YouTube and other Alphabet Inc. properties in January, according to an analysis of Nielsen digital consumption data by Pivotal Research analyst […]

Brands Brief: Native Ad Growth Expected to Slow in 2018

By Anna Gronewold Top Stories Growth in native advertising, or ads that appear to be similar to the content of the media platform on which they appear, is slowing, according to a report from research firm eMarketer. Native advertising spending in the United States is expected to increase about 31 percent to $32.9 billion in 2018, […]

Brands Brief: P&G to Form Creative Agency by Joining Ad Holding Company Partners

By Anna Gronewold Top Stories In its efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency in its marketing, Procter & Gamble Co.’s North American fabric care unit is creating a standalone agency with staff members from the company’s different ad holding company partners, including Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi, WPP’s Grey and Omnicom’s Marina Maher Communications and […]

Brands Brief: Advocacy Groups Claim YouTube Illegally Collects Data from Children

By Anna Gronewold Top Stories Twenty child, consumer, and privacy advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate YouTube for violating the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, which limits how a company can collect data about kids under 13 years old. The groups say YouTube has collected data on viewers […]

Brands Brief: Week in Review & What’s Ahead

By Anna Gronewold Week in Review Technology companies The Media Rating Council gave Facebook Inc. accreditation of its ad impressions on Facebook and Instagram on desktop, mobile web and mobile apps. Facebook said data firm Cambridge Analytica may have improperly collected data on as many as 87 million people, up from about 50 million that were […]