McDonald's Sverige/Flickr
McDonalds in Sweden is giving away VR headsets in its latest marketing effort.
1. Google just took a much clearer stance on banning ad blocking apps. Ad blockers that prevent ads from being served in other apps are banned from the Google Play Store, but ad blocking browsers are still OK.
2. Instagram now has more advertisers than Twitter. However, Instagram's 200,000 advertisers is still a small amount compared to parent company Facebook's 2.5 million advertising customers.
3. These billboards that track your movement have drawn comparisons to "Minority Report." The billboards use data from mobile phones to track what people do once they pass an outdoor ad.
4. The FDA may finally start to crack down on drug advertisements. It plans to recruit 1,500 volunteers as part of a study aimed at finding out how cartoons in drug advertisements influence how viewers see those drugs and their risks.
5. McDonald's latest Happy Meal box transforms into a virtual reality headset. McDonald's locations in Sweden will offer Happy Meals that, when the box is taken apart and refolded, double as "Happy Goggles."
6. Blippar raised $55 million to continue its mission to "build something bigger than the internet itself." Blippar wants to build a visual catalog of every object in the world, using image recognition technology and machine learning.
7. This former ad agency CEO says the ad industry has three major delusions holding it back. The Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman, sold his firm in 2013 and since then the caustic, but funny ex-ad man has made a name for himself in critiquing the ad business.
8. A new tool is launching that will let publishers know whether Facebook or Google is earning them more money. Taboola's new analytics dashboard will also show publishers which individual articles are generating the most ad revenue.
9. Facebook is letting publishers use Instant Articles to collect e-mail newsletter sign-ups. The New York Times and Washington Post are trying out the feature, Digiday reports.
10. The UK culture secretary is expected to warn of the threat to newspapers from ad blocking. John Whittingdale is delivering a speech at the Oxford Media Convention today, The Guardian reports.
