What you need to know in advertising today

Business Insider wrapped up its annual flagship IGNITION conference yesterday, with a line-up of speakers including NYU professor and L2 founder Scott Galloway, CNN president Jeff Zucker, political commentator Tucker Carlson and executive editors of The Washington Post and The New York Times respectively, Martin Baron and Dean Baquet among others.

Here are some highlights:

Scott Galloway said that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google should be broken up. He argued that regulation creates unbelievable shareholder value when it's done adroitly, and that breaking them up is necessary in pursuit of capitalism.

CNN President Jeff Zucker dismissed President Donald Trump's criticism of the network. In a conversation with BI's advertising editor Mike Shields, Zucker said that Trump was "a terrible media critic." He also commented on Matt Lauer's firing from NBC on sexual misconduct allegations saying that "I've known Matt for 25 years and didn't know this Matt."

In an interview with Business Insider global editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson, Fox News host Tucker Carlson defended his coverage of an Obama administration-era uranium deal that conservative lawmakers and media outlets have covered extensively in recent weeks. He argued that the company shipped American uranium to Canada without an export license.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said that the criticism of the newspaper's "sympathetic" neo-Nazi profile was "the most ridiculous overreaction." "My own view, and I suspect some people will disagree: It was the most ridiculous overreaction to a story," Baquet said.

In an interview on leading brand evolutions, AT&T chief brand officer Fiona Carter dodged my questions on how the company and competition would evolve if the Time Warner Acquisition were to go through. Instead, she said that because AT&T is a legacy company, "our competition is ourselves."

Marriott has been at the forefront of storytelling and experiential marketing in recent years, and has combined both data and creativity more effectively than most others. According to Marriott's CMO Karin Timpone, focusing on loyalty as a business strategy has led to the brand's success.

In a conversation with me, Anheuser-Busch's CMO Miguel Patricio revealed that unlike Wix.com and Honda, the beer conglomerate was coming back to the Super Bowl this year with not one, but six spots for Stella Artois. He also discussed the idea behind Bud Light's viral spot "Dilly Dilly" and dished on how a combination of universal and local principles was making AB-InBev's beers "more premium." Catch the conversation on video here, starting at 02:31:00.

In other news:

Gwyneth Paltrow is taking her lifestyle and e-commerce brand Goop to Snapchat. Goop will publish a weekly digital magazine on women's lifestyle on the platform every Friday starting December 1.

Pinterest president and top business chief Tim Kendall is out, and is leaving to create a startup with the goal of curbing tech device addiction. Kendall appeared at Business Insider's IGNITION conference in New York to champion Pinterest as a challenger to the Facebook-Google duopoly over the digital advertising business just a day before the news of his departure was announced.

A new Latin food website from a Food Network star and a media mogul is betting Americans are ready to graduate from Taco Tuesday. Cocina is a digital media venture focused on Latin food and culture.

Alaska Air is investigating a sexual harassment claim by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg wrote on social media late on Wednesday that a passenger in a seat near her began making lewd and explicit sexual remarks on a flight from Los Angeles to Mexico.

UK consumers are suing Google over alleged data snooping. The Californian company seemingly used an algorithm to trick Apple's Safari browser on iOS devices into releasing personal data between 2011 and 2012.

Amazon's Fire TV is adding support for voice commands on third party apps via Alexa. Compatible apps include Hulu, NBC, Bravo, Showtime, Sony's PlayStation Vue, and CBS All Access.

Vine founder Dom Hofmann has announced that he's working on - and funding by himself - a follow-up to Vine. The popular service, acquired by Twitter in 2012, was shut down last year.

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