Three major US brands have joined the growing list of advertisers to pause advertising on YouTube following recent revelations that ads are being inadvertently placed with extremist content. The FMCG company spent $2.4bn (GBP1.9bn) on advertising last year. It has been a close partner of Google and was among the first to use YouTube Labs.

The prospect of the EU demanding tens of billions of pounds from the UK in return for a Brexit deal has been raised by the bloc's chief negotiator. Michel Barnier used a speech to outline his priorities for handling the divorce -- with the process set to be formally started on 29 March when Theresa May triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to confirm the UK's intentions.

Facebook has given its backing to header bidding, an advanced programmatic bidding technique that is said to be more profitable for publishers and brands. Header bidding works by allowing publishers to offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously before making the final call to ad servers such as DoubleClick.

Twitter users are keen second-screeners -- being 33% more likely than the average Internet user to be on another device while watching TV, according to new research from Global Web Index. Mobile is absolutely dominant here, and crucially, when it comes to what these users are doing while dual-screening, 69% say they are either using social networks or messaging friends.

Families are more pessimistic about their finances than at any point in the past three years, with household budgets under as much pressure as they have been since late 2014, according to IHS Markit. Research by the Bank of England, meanwhile, indicates that consumer demand is waning. Both reports blame the deteriorating outlook on the collapse in the pound since Brexit.

Google risked breaking anti-terrorism laws by allegedly failing to remove illegal recruitment videos by a banned far-Right group, MPs have suggested. Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP and chairman of the home affairs select committee, said that National Action videos were still available on YouTube, which is owned by Google.

Baijiu, the fiery Chinese alcoholic drink, has overtaken Whisky to become the world's most valuable spirit, according to Brand Finance. Baijiu's share of total brand value grew from 23% in 2016 to 37.5% in 2017. The surge saw the Chinese beverage -- which is made from wheat -- overtake Whisky, which dropped from 37% in 2016 to 28% in 2017.

Sterling jumped by more than a cent to a three-week high against the dollar yesterday on the back of solid economic data that raised the hint of an early rise in interest rates. Manufacturers claimed to be as confident as they had been in two decades and official data showed that public borrowing was running at its lowest level since the financial crisis.

Matthew Hancock, the media minister, needs to take steps to avoid a conflict of interest on press regulation after George Osborne, his former boss, took a job as the editor of the Evening Standard, Labour said on Tuesday. Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader and shadow culture secretary, wrote to Hancock asking him to recuse himself given his history of working as Osborne's chief of staff.

Facial reactions can reveal which adverts will deliver a sales lift with 75% accuracy, a major study by Mars has found -- offering hope that pre-testing can lead to the creation of more effective campaigns. The research, carried out with "emotional intelligence" software company Realeyes, involved 149 ads across 35 brands, with 22,334 people in six countries.