Huawei has been painting itself as a victim of great injustice in the past weeks after it had been slammed by a US trade ban. Last week, however, it became the villain when its phones started serving ads on their lockscreens. At first Huawei's US PR team denied any such activity. While it now owns up to the error, it might only be because its actual plans have been revealed ahead of schedule.
Starting next month, Google will require advertisers to certify whether they provide abortions before they can run advertisements related to the medical procedure. The new Google Ads policy targets misleading advertisements directing women in need of an abortion to anti-abortion groups. Advertisers that don't actually provide abortions will have their advertisements listed with a disclosure revealing this fact to viewers.
Spotify is testing voice-enabled advertisements with Unilever brand Axe, the company has announced. The advertisements will require users to say a voice command in order to take action related to the advertisement -- in this case, launching a branded playlist. The technology will also be tested with Spotify Studios and a new podcast.
"Google" is now also a verb because of how search has become so ingrained in our modern lives. There is, however, one other Google product that has subtly cemented its role in our lives. Google Maps has changed the way we travel and navigate partly because it made what was once a paid subscription feature available for all and for free. The latter isn't going to change but Google may soon be looking for ways to profit from its lead by, what else, placing ads in Google Maps.
Although ads are the bane of many people's existence on the web and mobile, they are more or less a fact of life in the audio and video entertainment industries. That doesn't mean they're not that annoying for some viewers who wish they could just skip those commercials. Cord-cutting services like TiVo offer the opportunity to do just that and the popular DVR maker will be bringing the ability to automatically skip those ads soon. With some caveats, of course.
Google's got a new plan to make certain every single game in Android has the ability to turn your tap effort into revenue. They've angled their newest tech for this end as "App campaigns for engagement" and "smart segmentation" features for developer use in Android games. Both of these methods/options are available to developers in the very near future, so today we're talking about what they're doing to draw you in.
A couple of agencies took a peek at how Advertising Giant Facebook uses info on mobile device owners without their consent. It's become apparent that more than a few very, very popular apps on both Android and iOS are guilty of this info sharing team-up. Using data trackers and process readers, both Privacy International and MobilSicher (mobile secure, in Germany) have provided basic lists of Facebook affiliate apps.
Google will soon make it easier for its users to find and purchase the objects they see in some images. The new advertisement format is called 'shoppable ads,' and it enables advertisers to share images on Google Images that include information on items featured within the photo. An image showing a kitchen may contain purchasing info on the dishes and decorations visible in the ad, for example.
The people who made the app Playlist hired someone very smart to create for them a real-life ad campaign. In this campaign, they've released a custom roll of toilet paper. The toilet paper is printed with messages about the app. While printed toilet paper is generally a joke about disliking whatever's printed, this print is both part of the joke AND avoids being the punchline. This toilet paper advertisement targets every person who uses their iPhone whilst doing their business... that means everybody.
Incognito Mode in Google Chrome (aka Private Mode) will be better in the near future - in a set of ways. Those that've used this mode in the past likely used it to avoid being tracked for advertisements and/or to make sure what they were looking at wasn't part of their internet browser history. Today it's become clear that there was an open exploit in the system - one that's being rectified by Google right this minute.
Spotify has made a change to its Terms of Service that hint at a big crackdown on users who take measures to avoid advertisements. The free version of the service is ad-supported, meaning users occasionally hear an advertisement or are prompted to watch a video. Some users have found ways around these ads, though, such as modified applications and ad-blocking tech.
In early December, word surfaced that Hulu was considering a new type of advertisement: one that appears when the viewer pauses the video they're watching. The company has proceeded with introducing that new ad type, though it doesn't work quite the way it was originally tipped. Rather than presenting a video advertisement, Hulu is dishing up a static ad on the screen when a video is paused.