Advertising news today: Amazon’s programmatic ads, BlackRock rebrand

Amazon CEO and founder
Jeff Bezos.
Alex Wong/Getty
Images

Amazon pulled its fourth-quarter advertising spend from
Bloomberg, but the company’s ads are still being served on the
publisher’s site.

According to a
report from BuzzFeed News, Amazon pulled ads from
Bloomberg on October 16 after the site published a controversial
story alleging the Chinese government hacked
Amazon and Apple’s hardware by embedding microchips into
third-party motherboards. A source familiar with the advertising
relationship between the companies confirmed to Business Insider
that Amazon stopped its “pretty significant” fourth-quarter ad
spend.

But when Business Insider looked at Bloomberg’s website on
Friday, an ad for Amazon Prime promoting the upcoming show
“Homecoming,” starring Julia Roberts, appeared at the top of an
article page from a story published on October 24 about Uber —
purchased through programmatic technology.

Click here to read more about Amazon’s
ad buy.

In other news:

‘Bite-size, usable and shareable’: Inside BlackRock’s
digital rebrand that’s taking cues from social
media. BlackRock is taking the first step in a
digital rebrand by rolling out a new website on Monday, led by
chief marketing officer Frank Cooper.

Facebook has discovered an Iranian influence campaign
that was followed by more than 1 million people. The
accounts were spreading divisive political posts on the social
network and had amassed about 1 million followers, the company
said.

Elsewhere at Facebook, Wall Street is surprisingly upbeat
about after 5 recent catastrophes at the company — but there
could be a sting in the tail. Wall Street analysts
pointed to the fact Instagram is hugely popular with users and
advertisers, and that many Facebook users feel locked into the
social network.

Here’s how much top Silicon Valley startup salespeople really get
paid, according to leaked Andreessen Horowitz data.
The data includes base salary, bonus percentages, and equity —
across different funding rounds and different sectors.

Broadcaster J Sports beamed digital ads for AIG and Canon
onto the field during a rugby game between Australia and New
Zealand, reports The Daily Mail. The ‘virtual
advertising’ was quickly pulled.