Advertising and marketing

Audrey Hepburn shines again in new CGI ad

No one can play Audrey Hepburn as well as Audrey Hepburn.

Through the magic of computer-generated imagery, the Galaxy chocolate company -- known as Dove outside the U.K. and Ireland -- has brought the deceased movie star back to life for a lovely one-minute commercial by ad agency AMV BBDO and visual-effects company Framestore. … Read more

Facebook gives advertisers more opportunities to target users

By opening up an ad tool that thrives on user contact information, Facebook is giving more advertisers a chance to market directly to users.

The social network announced today that it's expanding access to its custom audience tool -- a tool that lets companies target their ads to existing customers based on their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The tool, one of Facebook's several advertising tools that rely on user data, rolled out in September. The contact information is not directly shared between companies -- it's hashed to protect privacy and then used to place ads, according … Read more

Yelp: We compete with print -- not Google or Facebook

Google, who? Facebook, huh? Yeah, that's right. The Internet behemoths don't pose any threat to business-reviews site Yelp and its still-blossoming local advertising business. Well, that's Yelp's attitude anyhow.

"Today, we're really competing with print, radio, and television," Geoff Donaker, Yelp's chief operating officer, said Tuesday when speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference.

But what about Internet businesses like Google and Facebook? Donaker is sure the pair will compete with Yelp in the local advertising arena eventually -- emphasis on eventually. Yelp will let that battle "play … Read more

Foursquare checks in to more revenue with credit card specials

Money in the bank. That's the motivation behind a new Foursquare initiative that lets members link their Visa and MasterCard credit or debit cards and redeem money-back specials from participating merchants.

Foursquare, a company banking on check-ins to power its Explore discovery feature, aims to encourage more of its 30 million members to tell the application where they are with the additional freebies. The places-centric social network also hopes to cash in from the program. The company pockets a fee for every credit redemption it processes.

Today's announcement marks the first significant expansion to the startup's credit … Read more

Firefox patch to block third-party advertising cookies

Firefox will soon be able to block third-party advertising cookies by default, preventing ad networks from tracking users' browser activity.

Advertisers use cookies to track users' Web activity to deliver more-targeted ads. The new patch will allow cookies from sites users actively visit but block those from third-party sites that haven't been visited by the user.

Firefox users have long had the ability to manually disable the cookies, but the patch will allow the browser to automatically perform the task. Contributed by Jonathan Mayer, a researcher at Stanford, the patch is expected to be released in Firefox 22 on … Read more

Samsung Oscars ad to feature Tim Burton

When it comes to advertising, Samsung thinks it has Apple a touch jittery.

With ad after ad, Samsung's brand image is becoming sharper, wittier, and more lovable.

So the temptation to take over an awards ceremony in which actors desperately try to be sharper, wittier, and more lovable than other actors has proved irresistible.

As Ad Age reports, Korea's finest is positively hijacking tomorrow night's Oscars broadcast with six ads.

The most fetching promises to be one in which the brilliant director of "Edward Scissorhands," Tim Burton, will make an appearance.

He will play something … Read more

Square unveils 'Business in a Box'

Square today unveiled its "Business in a Box" package, a bundle including all the components needed for a small business to start taking payments on the company's Square Register platform.

With Square Register, almost any business can accept payments wirelessly from customers' mobile devices. The system lets businesses use an iPad instead of a cash register, and gives them an accompanying set of analytics tools, while customers download the app, sign up, register a credit card, and then pay automatically at any of the hundreds of thousands of merchants running Square Register.

The new bundle includes two … Read more

LivingSocial raises $110M in funding from current investors

LivingSocial has raised $110 million in funding from its current investors, Chief Executive Tim O'Shaughnessy wrote today in a memo to employees, giving the daily deals site a much-needed cash infusion.

"This investment is a tremendous vote of confidence in our business from the people who know us best, our current board members and investors," he said in a memo viewed by CNET. "They have reviewed our plans for 2013, and they are enthusiastic enough to want to commit additional financial resources through this round."

The financing followed a "competitive process" in which … Read more

Google removes asteroid doodle before you can see it

It's not easy to celebrate a near miss on the day of an actual hit.

Google discovered this yesterday. The company was very keen to offer another of its highly involving doodles for your weekend enjoyment.

Its nerd-leaning artists thought it might be fun to create a little something that cheered the fact that Asteroid 2012 DA14 wasn't going to strike Earth and create havoc.

Sadly, an ill-timed meteorite did strike Earth and create havoc.… Read more