Group Publishing Director, Michael Rowley, has been promoted to the newly-created role of Managing Director, Brands; Product Director, Lee Wilkinson, to the newly-created role of Strategy & Product Director; and Group Trading and Partnerships Director, Greg Witham, to Group Publishing Director of the newly-formed Entertainment Group at Hearst Magazines UK.

Independent music labels are at loggerheads with YouTube over the licensing terms for its upcoming streaming music subscription service. The service - still not officially announced, but the subject of longstanding speculation within the music and technology industries - is expected to compete directly with Spotify, Deezer and their rivals.

Express.co.uk was the fastest growing UK national newspaper website in April according to new figures published by the Audit Bureau Circulation (ABC) today, recording 10.7 million unique monthly visitors, up 13 percent on March's figures. DailyStar.co.uk, another Express Newspapers title, also reported growth in April as traffic rose by seven per cent to just over 6.8 million.

Carla Buzasi, Huffington Post UK editor, offered some words of advice to Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore as he considers a push into the UK market. "It's interesting, seeing American sites moving over here," said Buzasi when asked what she thought of plans to tailoring the news site, a competitor to Huffington Post globally, to a specific UK audience.

Twitter's ability to block certain tweets or users from being seen in specific countries, a somewhat Orwellian feature it calls the "country-withheld content" tool, seems to be getting more popular, according to the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, which tracks such things: tweets and/or users are now being blocked in Pakistan as well as Turkey, and a pro-Ukrainian account is apparently unavailable to users who try to view it from inside Russia, at the request of the government.

The results show, says Newsworks, that the average tap rate (interaction) with a tablet ad is 0.79%, up to 40 times greater than the average online display click-through rate. Consumers also spend an average of seven seconds with tablet ads. With tablet ownership up to almost 18 million in the UK, these benchmarks are timely. Tablet owners are most likely to be 35-44 years old (47%), a core media audience. Newsbrands now have a weekly reach of more than 1.5 million via tablets.

Commissioned by Expedia Media Solutions and conducted by comScore, the proprietary research shows that UK consumers, and especially travelers, are an active, mobile-savvy group interested in making purchases and conducting research on mobile platforms. According to the study, in the UK, mobile now represents 30% of all internet usage including 18% from smartphones and 12% from tablets, demonstrating the vast and valuable mobile market.

BBC News should learn lessons from BuzzFeed to drive a digital presence that is "punching well below its weight", according to a report on the future of its output. The report, commissioned by BBC head of news James Harding from Sir Howard Stringer, also said that the BBC's web presence lacks "character and personality" compared with younger rivals such as Vice Media and BuzzFeed.

Grazia magazine owner The Mondadori Group is set to launch an e-commerce fashion store under the Grazia name after it acquired fashion site London-Boutiques.com. The acquisition of the London-based marketplace, which offers clothing and accessories from boutiques in the city, marks the publishing house's first foray into the fashion retail sector.

Google has become the world's most valuable brand, finally usurping Apple, which has held the top spot for the last three years. According to Millward Brown's BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking, Apple's brand value fell by 20% in the last 12 months to GBP88bn, giving the top spot to Google whose value increased by 40% to $159bn.