Marketing Week
British consumers' propensity to make major purchases has increased by seven points this December to +12, according to GfK's latest index. This is five points higher than the same time last year and 14 points higher than July 2016, when major purchases fell to -2. The core consumer confidence index has also increased by one point this December to -7.
Press Gazette
The Mirror Online has become the second most popular multiplatform news Web site, overtaking the Guardian for the first time, new comScore data shows. Mirror.co.uk recorded 22.1m unique monthly visitors for November -- up 2% year-on-year -- putting it ahead of ahead of theguardian.com with 21.6m uniques, down 10% year-on-year. Mail Online continues to be the most visited site.
The Telegraph
Spending too much time "lurking" on Facebook could make you miserable this Christmas, new research suggests. Christmas with close family and friends offers the perfect opportunity to disconnect from the Internet for a while, but many of us will still log into Facebook to share photos, videos and updates over the festive period.
The Telegraph
Super Mario Run has broken Apple's record for the fastest-downloaded app in the first week that is has been available, despite swaths of complaints and a dramatic drop in Nintendo's value. Nintendo's latest foray into mobile gaming has become a smash hit, with Super Mario Run being downloaded 40m times in the first four days it was available.
Campaign
In a series of four videos posted on its YouTube channel, Tesco surprised four women by reuniting them with family members they didn't expect to see over Christmas. The four stars of the ads thought the supermarket was there to interview them about their experiences of Christmas. They then receive a delivery from a Tesco van, at which point the true purpose of the visit is revealed.
Campaign
Fiat Chrysler, the Italian car manufacturer, has appointed Starcom to handle its estimated EUR600m media planning and buying business across EMEA and Asia-Pacific after a competitive pitch. Starcom, a subsidiary of Publicis Media, has snatched the business in around 30 markets from WPP's Maxus, the incumbent. Fiat called the review in July.
Campaign
Publicis Media has done best out of Mars' media-buying review, landing the lion's share of the estimated GBP400m business in seven major markets. Zenith retained the estimated GBP90m UK account. Starcom won Germany and India from MediaCom and retained China and Southeast Asia. The German account is believed to be a significant win and roughly on par in size with the UK.
The Drum
Nielsen has confirmed that it has bought audience data business VisualDNA for an undisclosed sum to further its marketing cloud efforts, The Drum has revealed. The acquisition comes just a day after it was reported that Nielsen had paid $560m for media metadata business Gracenote. VisualDNA is an audience data business that supplies data to brands, agencies and publishers.
The Drum
The social media contract for the Mayor of London's annual New Year's Eve fireworks event has been awarded to content agency Brawl. The project will see Brawl take responsibility for content development across all social media channels and will run from now until January 2017.
Campaign
Budweiser is extending its Christmas partnership with Uber to offer a free ride home on Christmas Eve to both new and existing users of the app. The Anheuser-Busch InBev brand teamed up with Uber earlier this month in its latest campaign to discourage drunk driving. It has been offering free rides worth up to GBP15 throughout December, but only to new Uber users.