With a possible European Commission antitrust inquiry looming over Google (NSDQ: GOOG), the advertising boss who says “we’re Google’s biggest customer” has come out batting for marketers he says are gagging for regulatory measures. “The ‘G’ word” is “competitively dangerous”, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell told the FT Digital Media…

Alok Kejriwal is CEO and co-founder of the online gaming company games2win.com. He blogs at rodinhood.com. In October of last year alone, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) attracted 605 million unique Internet users (50% of the global Internet population), got them to return another 18 times, stick around for 9.5 minutes during…

Visible Technologies, which helps companies track what people are saying about them online, has raised $22 million in a third round of funding led by new investor Investor Growth Capital; existing investors Centurion Holdings, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and WPP also participated. The new funding means that the company will have…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has hired ad industry vet Torrence Boone as managing director for agency development in North America, Ad Age reported. Although Google is not considered the “frenemy” it once was by the major ad agencies, the search giant’s ability to reach out has been hampered for the past…

Rob Norman (pictured) will add the title of CEO of GroupM North America to his current role as head of GroupM Interactive, the WPP media unit’s digital arm. Norman replaces Marc Goldstein, who will leave his role as GroupM NA CEO effective March 31.  Goldstein has been in the post…

WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell had predicted a two percent revenue fall for 2009, then revised it downward to four percent after a lackustre first half. In reality, both figures are wide of the mark: for the first nine months of the year, WPP made revenue of £6.29 million—an impressive…

Just a month into its $100 million branding campaign, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is switching gears and handing the reins to Omnicom Group shop Goodby, Silverstein & Partners from the previous agency lead, WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather, AllThingsD’s Kara reports. San Francisco-based Goodby, most famous for its “Got Milk?” ads, comes…

With the 2016 Olympic Games all squared away and set for Rio de Janeiro, members of the International Olympic Committee could get down to more serious business—such as how to handle the issue of online video. WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell had some very simple ideas for the IOC…

WPP Group’s lawsuit against web-based TV creative ad agency Spot Runner for securities fraud and breach of contract has been dismissed, sources close to the legal dispute tell paidContent. WPP, which helped lead a $40 million funding in the Los Angeles company about three years ago, accused Spot Runner of…

Denizen, a small Delaware ad firm, is suing JWT and its parent WPP over the idea to use product placement to promote Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) search engine, Bing, AdAge reports. The suit grows out of an alliance that Denizen says tried to strike with WPP in 2002 to share its…

In the first half of 2009, advertising group WPP made one quarter of its revenue from its digital activities, showing that advertisers are investing in new online ways to track, measure and expose their brands in the recession. In an unaudited interim report covering the six months to June 30,…

No surprise that Martin Sorrell sees the next few months as “very tough”, but the WPP ad group CEO also reckons the financial markets will improve in the second half of the year, leading to a “real-world” recovery in 2010 (via Bloomberg). By that time, though, the advertising world will…

WPP Group will discontinue media buying and planning shop MediaCom’s Beyond Interaction unit as it seeks to further streamline its traditional and digital advertising services, Mediapost reported. The move comes almost a year after MediaCom initiated a global realignment of its digital unit. At the time, Beyond Interactive, as the…

Looking to expand its European presence, Microsoft’s Razorfish has bought Spanish digital ad shop Wysiwyg. Terms were not disclosed. But as Razorfish was adding elsewhere, it was subtracting in the U.S., as Bloomberg reported that the company laid off 40 staffers in New York this week. The job cuts represent…

WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell’s persistence could finally pay off this week. After months of having its offers rejected again and again by audience monitor TNS Media Intelligence, the ad giant could finally prevail in its bid to take over the company, Ad Age reports. TNS executives have continued…

Former Digitas exec Neal Prescott has been named CEO of WPP Digital’s new production services unit, Deliver. The new unit will tie together production services in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa and work with all of WPP’s digital properties, including Actis Systems (Russia), AGENDA (China), Wunderman’s ZAAZ…

German audience measurement firm GfK appears to be withdrawing its bid for British research company Taylor Nelson Sofres, according to Reuters, which cited a story in Germany’s Manager magazine based on unidentified sources. GfK is said to be dropping its bid because Apax, the PE firm that agreed to help…

As expected, WPP Group is making a hostile bid for audience measurement firm Taylor Nelson Sofres, which has rejected the ad holding company’s three previous offers, Reuters reports. That in turn, has led UK-based TNS’ preferred suitor, Germany audience measurement provider GfK to rethink the combination of equals that was…

Audience measurement firm Taylor Nelson Sofres has confirmed its merger with German rival GfK in a probable attempt to stave off a third acquisition bid from Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP. The pair agreed a nil-premium 50-50 merger that would create the world’s second largest market research outfit after Nielsen and…