General Motors Co. GM -0.97% plans to stop advertising with Facebook Inc. after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers' car purchases, according to a GM official. The move by GM, one of the largest advertisers in the U.S., puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products. On Friday, Facebook is expected to sell shares in an initial public offering that could put a market value on the company of as much as $104 billion. Executives have spent the last two weeks trying to convince
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From Foursquare to Tumblr, lots of today's hot tech companies are being grown in New York City. The fifth annual Internet Week NY, which began Monday and will run through May 21, is designed to, among other things, recognize companies like them and help foster startups shooting for similar success. "The cool thing about Internet Week NY is it's entirely programmed and curated by the city's internet community," said Internet Week co-chairman David-Michael Davies. "We have about 225-250ish events happening throughout the city and they really range. We have some art events happening in galleries in SoHo, we have conferences happening
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The pay TV business continued to expand in the first quarter, but that growth is clearly decelerating. The top 10 publicly traded operators of cable, satellite and telecommunications-based pay TV services added 494,000 video subscribers in the first quarter, according to data compiled by paidContent from Q1 earnings reports. That represents just 54 percent of the quarter-to-quarter growth reported by these companies in Q1 2009, when the U.S. was mired in recession. Earlier in the week, Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Craig Moffett released data indicating the total subscriber gain to be only around 422,000 — in addition to the hard data released by
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Real Simple caused a stir on the web in December when it told Ad Age that it was getting more referrals from a relatively obscure platform called Pinterest than from Facebook. Five months later, it has joined an exclusive "100,000 Club" comprising brands with a six-figure following on the social-media upstart. Real Simple is the first print publication to crack six figures, according to a ranking by the social-media influence tracking service ZoomSphere, and trails only wedding blog The Perfect Palette (255,000 followers) and the hair and makeup how-to site The Beauty Department (123,000 followers). To give some context, the next-most-followed
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Not everyone believed that the Febreze commercials featuring blindfolded people sitting in dirty -- but Febrezed -- rooms were completely real. To persuade the doubters, Grey New York pulled off a stunt in New York City ("home of the biggest skeptics in the world," according to the agency). It outfitted an old shipping container once used for seafood with Febreze freshener plug-ins and put it in the middle of the meatpacking district. People in the vicinity were blindfolded and led inside, then asked: "Where do you think you are?" Link: Grey Brings Febreze Experiment to Life in New York
Ever wonder what the Incredible Hulk smells like? Try Indian sandalwood, musk and sharp cedar. "It's more of an earthy fragrance," said Andrew Levine, CEO of Jads International, the Maryland-based marketer that signed on to produce a line of "Avengers" scents, including Smash, a cologne based on the green superhero. "You have to mimic the character." Dozens of companies are tying in with "Marvel's The Avengers," the Walt Disney Co. action film opening today in the U.S. With its Captain America character dating back to World War II, "The Avengers" has an unusually broad appeal, attracting licensing and sponsorship deals that go well
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Facebook is the biggest online social medium in the world. People love it, are uneasy with it, even a little suspicious. It just may have done something inarguably good, with immediate, measurable impact. So far, that seems to be the case with Facebook's new organ-donation push. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that users can now choose to indicate to their Facebook world that they wish to be organ donors. And, if you choose, a link can whisk you right to your state's donor registry, where you can register online. "On the one hand, now family and friends will know
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is pushing for a law that would force social networks, email providers, and other peer-to-peer services to become "wiretap-friendly" according to a CNET report. Such legislation would expand an existing federal law that applies to cell phone operators and broadband networks. Under 1994's Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), carriers and broadband networks must have built-in backdoors giving law enforcement agencies direct access to user data during warranted investigations. CALEA began with carriers in 1994 and expanded to broadband providers in 2004. At the moment, Internet companies use their own slurping methods to provide user
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Young people are more comfortable using services including social media networks, text messaging and email, but how often do they use video chats and media facilities? The latest research report provided by the Pew research institute Internet & American Life Project suggests that video and media streaming use is on the rise. The survey comprised of 799 teenagers aged 12 - 17 who were asked about their online behaviours and video-orientated activities. It was fielded between April and July in 2011. The survey found: 95 percent of respondents use the Internet in some fashion. 37 percent of internet users aged 12 - 17 participate in
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NEW YORK — It’s on. Independent groups favoring Mitt Romney already are launching TV advertisements in competitive states for the November general election, providing political cover against President Barack Obama’s well-financed campaign while the Republican candidate works to rebound from a bruising and expensive nomination fight. Some conservative organizations also are planning big get-out-the-vote efforts, and Romney backers are courting wealthy patrons of his former GOP rivals. Taken together, the developments underscore how dramatically the political landscape has changed since a trio of federal court cases — most notably the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling — paved the way for a flood
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