Metro, the free newspaper owned by Daily Mail & General Trust, is backing its new online gaming platform, Metro Play, with a £1.9m national ad campaign using the tagline "More rewarding ways to Metro Play". […]

Ikea's ad featuring a family at war with their garden gnomes has escaped an Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigation, despite the ad watchdog receiving almost 50 complaints. […]

Grand Visual has hired Ben Putland as production director and Jeremy Taylor as account director. […]

Jamie's Italian, the Jamie Oliver restaurant group, has hired Karmarama as its first advertising agency, after a three-way pitch against Antidote and CheethamBell JWT. […]

DigitasLBi and Razorfish, the Publicis-owned digital networks, have appointed international leaders. […]

Interesting research here from the research from the Pew Research Center points to how Twitter isn’t perceived by some teens as a social network in the same way as Facebook or LinkedIn. Read more » […]

There are three ways to look at Yahoo’s $1.1bn acquisition of photo-blogging service Tumblr.  You can view it as a considered strategic move to evolve Yahoo and give it a slice of social media. Read more » […]

For anyone who grew up during the 70’s and 80’s, the continued digital revolution is staggering to behold. Each new development brings us more wonderful experiences, with amazing freedom, at a hitherto unimaginable speed. But for the next generation, my 12 year old daughter included, nothing has changed. Read more » […]

A useful study here from the ‘Pew Research Center’ taking a look at the demographic make-up of US social media users across Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. No data on LinkedIn of Google+, but great stats all the same. Read more » […]

Technological innovations are everywhere, and while we may hear about a number of fascinating new developments, few will actually truly define the future of retail. Considering the changing landscape, technology is irrelevant if you don’t first understand both the behaviours and motivations of consumers in a hyper-connected, multi-channel world. Read more » […]

It has been just over a year this week since Facebook’s IPO and this infographic takes a timely look back at some of the milestones that the social network has racked up along the way. Read more » […]

On the same day Yahoo confirmed its acquisition of Tumblr, and promised not to “screw it up”, it announced an over haul of Flickr the photo sharing service it screwed up over a number of years. Read more » […]

I’m sure you’ve all seen a Vine, the six second looping images have been widely embraced by brands across social media. Some have got it completely right with well thought out directed mini movies whilst others just post content and hope for the best. A potential use for Vine, which has gone mostly unnoticed so far, is it’s potential use in Citizen Journalis […]

Pinterest is getting closer to big brands as it announces three new types of pin that will highlight major US retailers. It marks Pinterest’s first step towards associating images directly with brands and could be the beginning of a change on the social network that sees it become a marketplace as well as a site where people pin ideas of things they like or […]

Despite predictions of the demise of email, figures from the Radicati Group show that there were around 2.1 billion emails users in 2012, with the number set to grow beyond 2.8 billion in the next four years. Read more » […]