Volkswagen has put aside at least EUR6.5bn to cover the cost of addressing issues arising in the wake of the emissions scandal, including "winning back customer trust," as its brand reputation takes a hit. The car marque has now admitted that around 11 million of its vehicles worldwide have diesel engines with software "irregularities." The UK Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is calling for an EU-wide investigation into the Volkswagen issue and pushing for more accurate emissions tests.

McDonald's is renewing its reading initiative after smashing targets it set in the initial campaign launched in 2013. The new scheme will see 14 million more books featuring extracts from Roald Dahl's most popular stories distributed to children in a partnership between McDonald's, National Literacy Trust, Penguin Random House Children's UK and the Roald Dahl Literary Estate.The original project aimed to hand out 15 million books across the UK but actually delivered nearly 23 million.

H&M has released its first ad created by Adam & Eve/DDB, a trailer for a longer film featuring David Beckham and the American comedian Kevin Hart. In the 30-second ad, Beckham receives a phone call from his agent, who tells him that Hart wants to come to stay with him to prepare for the part of Beckham in I Beckham, a fictional movie about the former footballer's life. A longer version of the film will launch online on 28 September. The global campaign will extend to TV and cinema on 30 September.

Image-sharing platform Instagram is projected to raise $600m in global advertising revenues this year on the back of a rapidly expanding user base that has recently notched up its 400 millionth user. Figures compiled by eMarketer show that the Facebook-owned service will continue to enjoy rapid growth, powering ad revenues to $1.48bn in 2016 and $2.81bn by 2017.

Having recently inked its largest ever sponsorship deal with BT Sport to promote its Motors Marketplace, classifieds Web site Gumtree is targeting further deals as it aims to become one of the top 10 most popular sites in the UK. Admitting that Gumtree has focused its efforts primarily on mothers in the past, its head of marketing Hannah Wilson says the sponsorship of BT's Premier League coverage this season has succeeded in attracting men to the brand.

French data protection regulators have rejected Google's appeal over the extension of its right to be forgotten service to Web domains worldwide which the Silicon Valley giant wanted to prevent. The commission, known as the Nationale de l'Informatique et des Liberts (CNIL), ruled that Google must adhere to its order put forth in May stating that Google's right to be forgotten removals be applied to "all domain names" of the search engine, including google.com.

A study by marketing firms, Moz and Fractl into how different forms of advertising were received by millennials has found that mobile/in app advertising was perceived as the least effective form with sponsored story links coming second. Of the other forms of advertising looked at in the study -- display ads, paid-search ads, social media ads and ad retargeting -- ad retargeting was considered the most relevant with 18.9% of millennials viewing it as "very relevant," while 34.3% said it was "somewhat relevant."

Revenues from streaming songs on the Internet has passed $1bn for the first time, new RIAA figures have shown. Digital downloads of songs continued to fall out of favour in the first half of the year, while free and paid music-streaming revenue kept growing, even without much of a bump from the launch of Apple Music. Revenue from paid subscriptions to services like Spotify and Rhapsody grew 25pc to $478m, while revenue from free services like Pandora grew 22pc to $550m. 

A Fox News programme which said Birmingham was a city "where non-Muslims just simply don't go" breached broadcasting regulations and should have been corrected sooner, media regulator Ofcom has ruled. The comments were made in an edition of the Justice with Judge Jeanine [Pirro] show about Islamic extremism four days after the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Four people complained to Ofcom after the broadcast on 11 January this year.

Some 76% of marketers are using the wrong measurements to track and prove the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, according to a new study. The analysis by the Fournaise Marketing Group tracked 500 marketing strategies in the first half of the year found and branded the results as "shocking". It claims that 77% of marketers consider generating awareness a critical way of proving effectiveness. Fournaise claims this is wrong altogether.