The 10 things in advertising you need to know today
1. Facebook said its guidelines prevent employees from suppressing certain kinds of news. The company's statement comes in the wake of a report from Gizmodo where several former news "curators" said that the team routinely omitted right-wing news sources from Facebook's trending news section.
2. These are the 10 best-selling beer brands in the world. In recent years, the hierarchy of international brands has been massively shaken up by the increasing popularity of the alcoholic drink in China.
3. Comcast acquired French ad tech company StickyAds for more than $100 million. StickyAds is an SSP that specializes in helping publishers and TV broadcasters sell their video advertising inventory, both online and on TV.
4. Google is testing a change to one of its most iconic designs. The company is trying out changing its blue links in search results to black.
5. Tom Hanks is trying to save the world from a plague in the "Inferno" trailer. Seven years after playing Robert Langdon in "Angels & Demons," Tom Hanks returns for the character's latest adventure.
6. An interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Hastings and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke with VentureBeat over lunch in Marseille.
7. Spotify is diving headfirst into original video by making 12 TV-style shows. These shows will feature the likes of rap mogul Russell Simmons and Oscar-winner Tim Robbins, and will be available to all of Spotify's 75 million users.
8. One of Reddit's biggest communities wants to ban links from publishers that force you to turn off your ad blocker. The subreddit /r/technology has put the idea to the vote amongst subscribers - and it appears they're overwhelmingly in favor.
9. A Muslim charity is putting "Allah is great" posters on buses. Hundreds of British buses will carry adverts praising Allah as part of a campaign launched by the country's biggest Muslim charity to help victims of Syria's civil war.
10. Adblock Plus, the popular ad blocking software, says it now has more than 100 million "active users." While the company counts "users" as an "active installation" (meaning someone who has used the Adblock Plus browser extension or app on multiple devices will be counted multiple of times if they use it at least once on any of those devices over a monthly period,) it suggests Adblock Plus has captured around half of the global ad blocking audience, according to the latest estimates from PageFair and Adobe.