The Chancellor is facing a growing political row over the hike in National Insurance contributions for high-earning self-employed workers announced in his first Budget. Speaking to Sky News, Mr Hammond said the move would make the system fairer considering that employees and self-employed workers have access to similar benefits from the state.

Branded content has a better chance of appealing to teens ages 16 to 19 than to older Internet users in both Germany and the UK, according to a recent survey by Kantar Millward Brown. But in France, Italy and Spain, teens were not noticeably more favourable toward branded content than were older respondents.

According to Zaid Al-Qassab, the crisis in marketing is not solely about viewability, despite widespread industry concerns on the issue. "I am talking about the existential crisis around the future of marketing, which is currently both under-invested and under-prepared," he warned ISBA delegates in London yesterday.

The technology sector was a vocal advocate for Britain remaining in the European Union. But, in defiance of the widespread concerns, the industry has been thriving in the wake of the decision to leave, particularly in the areas of investment and expansion. Whether the picture will change when the Government triggers Article 50 isn't clear, but the signs indicate the sector is equipped to weather the storm.

Household spending is showing signs of tailing off in what a leading credit rating agency has warned may be an early sign that the economy has already begun to slow. Standard & Poor's said a close examination of consumer borrowing suggested that households would not load up on debt as they grappled with rising inflation in the aftermath of Brexit.

A parliamentary inquiry into fake news will consider legislation forcing social networks to improve the way they handle complaints after Facebook's failure to remove sexualised images of children. Damian Collins, chair of the culture, media and sport (CMS) committee, said Facebook's failure to remove all the images reported, as part of a BBC investigation this week, was "disturbing."

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has raised its economic growth expectations for this year. It now forecasts that the UK economy will grow by 2% this year, up from the 1.4% increase previously predicted. In 2018, growth will slow slightly to 1.6%, before rising again to 1.7% in 2019 and back at 2% in 2021.

BuzzFeed has asked a news agency to provide it with ten years of email correspondence to help it defend an $11m defamation action. British news agency journalist Michael Leidig is suing BuzzFeed in the US over an article that described him as "The King of Bullshit News," alleging that many of the stories provided by his agency -- Central European News -- were false.

Facebook will be questioned by a powerful group of MPs over its failure to remove sexualised images of children following a BBC investigation that found posts reported under its own guidelines were not being taken down. The BBC investigation revealed that of the 100 images and posts it flagged using Facebook's tools, just 18 were deemed by moderators to breach Facebook's guidelines.

With football growing richer every year, Heineken has described the sport as "totally overcrowded" from a sponsorship standpoint. Last week, the beer brand renewed its 27-year association with rugby after announcing its headline sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup 2019, which will be held in Japan.