An Uber rival backed by Mercedes launches in the London today, "The Telegraph" reports. The New York-based Via Van start-up has spent nearly a year waiting for a licence to operate its service, which encourages people to share a ride in the same van. Mercedes is reported to have invested $50m in the company.

Channel 4 is working with Unilever Ventures and Studio71 to identify social media influencers who have enough commercial potential to be rebranded by the channel, "Campaign" reveals.

The creative agencies from across the EU have merged to form Dept, "The Drum" writes. They include Webfactory and Building Blocks, which have offices in the UK, US and Spain. The new business will be headquartered in Amsterdam and will have 750 staff in eight countries with a combined turnover of more than 80m Euros.

Social media advertising will overtake television within two years, according to eMarketer. The report claims that Facebook will not be adversely impacted by the Cambridge Analytica data breach and will account for four-fifths of the GBP3.3bn spend on social in the UK this year, "The Guardian" reveals.

Rupert Murdoch is hoping selling Sky News to Disney will get around the competition authorities' media plurality concerns over his GBP11.7bn plan to buy the 61% of Sky he doesn't currently own. According to "The Guardian," Disney has "expressed interest" in buying Sky News to pave the way for its proposed GBP47bn takeover of 21st Century Fox, which would include all of Sky.

Shares in Spotify will go on sale this afternoon (London time) in New York for the first time. The BBC reminds readers that no new shares will be traded. Instead, existing investors are being given the opportunity to sell shares in a process that is likely to value the Swedish music streaming service at around $20bn.

In a "Wired" interview covering mainly France's AI strategy, the country's President, Emmanuel Macron, hinted that Google and Facebook have now reached a size where they may have to be dismantled because they are becoming too big to govern.