Brands and agencies have had mixed reactions to Google's viewability study, which revealed more than half of online ads are not seen by consumers. The fact that 56 percent of the ads tracked in the study were deemed not in-view has caused concern among some advertisers, including Kellogg's. Marie Curie Cancer Care head of digital, Claire Hazle, said the figure highlights how easily a brand's display campaign can become "electronic wallpaper" if not planned thoroughly.

Warc has downgraded its projected global advertising spend from an increase of 5.3% growth to an increase of 4.8% in 2015. The announcement is based on the trends across 12 major international markets. India and the UK were the only markets not to be downgraded from June's previous projection. The UK will remain steady and India's spend was raised by 1.6 percent -- the only nation to see a boost.

The World Cup was the most tweeted about event ever, and Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie revealed as the most retweeted tweet in the site's history. In a review of 2014 Twitter found that a record 672 million tweets were sent about this year's World Cup finals in Brazil, and that eight of the top 10 tweeted about moments of 2014 in the UK were sports-related. The only two non-sports subjects that made the list were New Year, as users sent their well-wishes, and when One Direction won the Best British Video Award at the Brits.

Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis says he sees a big opportunity for the retailer to be "much more joined up" in how it engages with customers as he says the company has so far spent GBP500m in improving the customer proposition, an investment that has led to the supermarket issuing its fourth profit warning in a year. Lewis said the appointment of Tesco's multichannel director Robin Terrell last week to a new role of Head of Customer would help the brand "link up" all its businesses -- from Clubcard to Tesco Mobile to Tesco Bank.

The Internet retailing and entertainment giant has approached agencies directly with the brief to create advertising for its Appstore, which sells Android applications, in the UK. At the same time, Amazon is understood to have issued a separate brief to find a creative agency to produce digital and social advertising for Audible. Amazon launched its Appstore in the UK 2012, one year after it was first released in the U.S. Earlier this year, Amazon appointed Lucky Generals and Joint to work on its pan-European advertising account.

The postcode targeting builds on the existing location-based advertising offered by Sky AdSmart. Previously brands could only choose by TV region, but now they have the choice of 124 postcodes across the UK. More than 50 advertisers have already signed up to the initiative, including Hastings Insurance Group and Pendragon, the car dealership. Graeme Hutcheson, the head of Sky AdSmart, said the introduction of postcode targeting "makes TV accessible to hundreds of advertisers who never thought of using TV as a medium before."

Television's share of the global advertising market has peaked in 2014 as brands begin to move an increasing amount of their media budgets to online video, according to ZenithOptimedia's end-of-year forecast. Although TV is still a dominant force in advertising -- currently accounting for 39.6% of total spend -- this will fall back to 37.4% in 2017. However, TV ad spend is still expected to grow by an average of 3% a year between 2014 and 2017. Online video will account for 2.8% of global ad spend by 2017, from the current 1.9% in 2014.

Despite millions of social media views for ads from John Lewis and Sainsbury's, it is Lidl's Surprises ad featuring a blind taste test of its Christmas products that is most likely to make people buy over the festive period, according to new research. The study by Millward Brown found that the highest proportion of people "agreed strongly" with the statement that the ad would make them more likely to buy from the grocer. It was given a score of 3.27 out of 5, where 5 is people that agree strongly and 1 people who disagree strongly.

Online marketplace eBay is to run an ad trading experiment next year that will see it cease all regular ad deals to focus solely on programmatically traded campaigns for one week. The e-commerce site will kickstart the experiment in the UK in the third week of February 2015, having struck tie-ups with brands including O2. Speaking to The Drum, eBay's head of advertising Phuong Nguyen said the company is in the midst of conversations with numerous other agencies and clients, the names of which it will look to reveal at a later date.

Stella Artois is launching an integrated marketing drive under the banner "Gives Beautifully," with an online series of short films using hashtag #givebeautifully and an online "Chalice Store" allowing consumers to buy a limited edition 300ml Christmas Chalice. The lager brand is also rerunning its glitzy 30-second "L'Anniversaire" Christmas TV ad -- which debuted last Christmas -- this year, using the endline "originally crafted as a Christmas gift."