The environmentally-friendly alternative to Formula One, which uses electric racing cars, has appointed Dare to handle its international creative account. Dare beat three agencies in a competitive pitch, including VCCP, and will be responsible for helping to launch the new sport. Its first season starts in September and will take in ten host countries. Formula E is believed to be in final stage discussions with a media agency for the project.

The ASA has acted again to ban an e-cigarette advert. Vype's latest poster, featuring a woman experiencing "the breakthrough" of coming through a cloud of smoke. The brand claimed this was meant to imply breaking free of tobacco and smoke, but the watchdog upheld complaints it implied the e-cigarette was 'a cessation device' which could help smokers quit. The ASA has already banned two other e-cigarette adverts this year, one from 5 Colors and the other from VIP.

Britons are switching to smartphones to keep up with the news, a report from Oxford University's Reuters Institute has found. The computer is still the main online device, accounting for how 57 percent of the public mostly consume news (down from 80 percent last year). The smartphone has nearly doubled its proportion of readers to 24 percent and tablets have soared in the past year from 5 per cent of news consumption to 11 percent.

Uber is trying to win over the hearts and minds of Londoners concerned by yesterday's black cab demonstrations with a print campaign positioning itself as offering a "state of the art" service at "affordable prices." Rival cab-hailing apps Hailo and Kabbee have similarly launched eCRM drives to allay travel concerns. Cab drivers gridlocked central London yesterday in a protest similar to those seen in Paris and Madrid against Uber over allegations that it acts as a fare meter as well as an ordering service.

The Sun's World Cup Pride edition is due to be delivered free today to 22m households, giving a reach of 48m adults. The 24-page special edition has been funded by advertising from Sky, Aldi, Coke, BT, Mars and Domino's. The paper hopes it will counter 'prejudice' against the title. However, copies will not be delivered in Liverpool, where animosity toward the paper remains high, following its reporting of the Hillsborough football disaster. The Page 3 glamour shot has also been dropped for the day.

The World Cup is set to become the world's most social sporting event ever with 90 percent of the world having already contributed to the conversation -- compared to 84 percent for the Olympics and 78 percent for the Super Bowl. The Adobe Digital Index (ADI) report captures buzz from blogs and social media and picked up 69m social mentions across 230 countries. Nearly half emanates from APAC, and EMEA is in second place with a third of buzz, while the UK accounts for a third of EMEA's buzz.

People are no more likely to want to pay for news online today than two years ago. According to a survey of 19,000 consumers in 10 countries by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, only one in ten is willing to pay for news -- the same figure reached in 2012. However, of those paying for news, 59 percent now subscribe, rather than pay for day passes or access to individual articles. This is up from 43 percent in 2012.

Carlsberg has called a review of its GBP10m advertising account for Somersby Cider. The incumbent, Fold7, won the business a year ago in a competitive pitch against Team Saatchi. Fold7 was responsible for launching Carlsberg's first cider brand in the UK, using television adverts which poked fun at Apple stores. Carlsberg is believed to have been talking to other agencies. Those currently on its roster include Saatchi & Saatchi, McCann and JWT.

"The Guardian" is teaming up with Kickstarter, the crowdfunding Web site, to offer a section that highlights new projects with journalistic potential. In a statement, the site commented: "Kickstarter's journalism category will be a home for projects that have until now landed in other areas of the website. Against a backdrop of flux and confusion in the journalism business, more than $10m has been pledged to 2,000-plus journalism, periodical, radio, and podcast projects on Kickstarter to date."

WPP continues to expand at pace as its data division, Kantar, announces it has bought Precise Media Group from Phoenix Private Equity. The deal values the London-based media monitoring business at around GBP70m. Phoenix had bought the company back in 2006 for GBP42m. Since then earnings have risen from GBP17m to GBP28.9m last September.