Ryanair's chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs has revealed that customer experience improvements were made over the past six months without seeking advice from an consultancy, which would have "paralysed" it. Speaking at The Drum's Joy of CX event in London, he said: "Myself and the chief executive [Michael O'Leary] sat down and looked at what we wanted to do, wrote a page on each, and then just got on with it," adding that it has been the leanest and "most straightforward" approach to business change he has seen in his career.

Marketing budgets have risen in Q3 2014, marking two years of continuous growth, according to IPA's latest Bellwether Report. The upward revision for the eighth consecutive quarter, and to the third-highest level in the survey's history, confirms the bullish outlook of companies regarding their own financial prospects. The report, which has been conducted on a quarterly basis since the first quarter of 2000, revealed a net balance of 12.6 percent of companies registering an increase in budgets during the third quarter of this year.

Virgin Media owner Liberty Global has awarded its GBP150m European media planning and buying account to Omnicom Media Group. The decision means that Manning Gottlieb OMD and Goodstuff Communications, the UK incumbents, will continue to work on the GBP75 million business. The two set up the joint venture Fifty6 to service the account in 2011. Omnicom Media Group will now handle media across Liberty Global's 12 markets in the region and all consumer brands, including Virgin Media, UPC, Unitymedia, Kabel BW, Telenet and VTR.

Will.i.am is partnering with O2 in the UK for the launch of his much-hyped wearable cuff Puls, a product the mobile company's marketing boss claims will "revolutionise people's opinions of wearable technology". The device has been developed by the musician and entrepreneur's i.am business and, as many reports predicted, it houses a SIM card meaning that users can make calls. It has 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, 1gb of memory and 16gb of storage. No release details have been made available.

Facebook has unveiled a new research unit that it hopes will guide its technology strategy by providing deeper insights into consumers' online behaviour. Steve Hatch, UK regional director for the social network, launched Facebook IQ at the IAB Engage conference in London today. He described it as "a combination of thought leaders, sociologists, ethnographers and researchers that are working outside of Facebook's walls to help us understand exactly the behaviours and motivations that are occurring in the wider world."

Gian Fulgoni, co-founder of research giant comScore, told IAB Engage that display ads, the mainstay of so much digital advertising, were a terrible way to reach consumers if you paid attention just to click-through rates (CTRs). Fulgoni said CTR was a "fast and inexpensive metric. That's why it's used. But it can be wrong and lead you the wrong way. There was initially a novelty about banner ads. Today, CTRs are abysmally low. UK has CTRs of 0.14% - 1 in 1,000 clicked. If that's the measure, then it doesn't work."

Vauxhall has signed an exclusive European sponsorship deal with BuzzFeed that will see the Adam Rocks city car plugged in 15 posts. The campaign, designed by creative agency Carat, will see content sponsored by Vauxhall -- and Opel in the appropriate markets -- simultaneously released in German and English on the site across the continent. The 15 sponsored posts will be marketed towards millennials throughout the year and will mark BuzzFeed's biggest automotive deal ever in Europe.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is seeking an ad agency to inform the UK public about its humanitarian work in the Middle East. The review is being handled by the Crown Commercial Service, which has approached agencies on its roster, inviting them to pitch. The planned campaign coincides with increased humanitarian problems in the region caused by the rise of the Islamic terrorist organisation ISIL.

John Lewis has started looking at what virtual reality (VR) technologies such as Oculus Rift could bring to the in-store experience. Speaking at IAB Engage 2014 event in London, the retailer's head of online marketing, Lloyd Page, revealed that it has started investigating the area predicting that "the VR and the in-store experience will collide." He said that it could be used in a situation where an in-store customer shopping within the furniture department can use the headset in order to visualise how it might look in their living room.

Google is allowing advertisers to more easily purchase top-tier content on YouTube in the UK through the launch of its Google Preferred tool. The initiative allows brands to reserve inventory from the top 5% of YouTube's most popular channels across categories such as food, music and entertainment. It uses an algorithm that ranks the channels by popularity and engagement, using signals such as viewing time, comments, shares and social embeds. The tool guarantees that marketers will be able to hit the scale of audience they are targeting.