Former president of The Huffington Post and Yahoo executive Greg Coleman has been named president of Criteo. Who or what is Criteo? A Palo Alto-based company that lets e-commerce companies "re-engage" with Web site visitors, according to The San Jose Business Journal. As the president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post, Criteo says, Coleman built a $30 million ad business in one year. As executive vice president for global sales at Yahoo, he's credited with leading a sales team that grew ad revenues from $600 million to more than $6 billion. Late last year, Criteo appointed …

More aggressively marketing its new group-buying feature, Facebook has been serving home page ads asking users them to invite friends to sign up for Deals news feeds and email notifications. "Meanwhile, Page admins have received location-customized emails from Facebook explaining that Deals could help them acquire more customers in their city," Inside Facebook reports. Bigger picture, "Facebook needs to build large subscriber and provider-bases to prime the service for an explosive formal launch." In mid-March, Facebook soft-launched Deals, showing news feed stories asking users to sign up to hear about local pre-paid group experiences they could have with …

As devices using Android continue to lower in price, Google's mobile operating system will power 49% of the world's smartphones in 2012. So says a new report from Gartner, which suggests smartphone sales will near 500 million units in 2011 -- a 57.7% increase from 2010, with sales of open OS devices accounting for a quarter of all mobile handset sales during that period. "Smartphone growth is expected to rise, helped by price reductions from competing manufacturers," notes The Next Web. "By 2015, two thirds of all open OS devices will have an average selling price of $300 …

Amid a rise in "connected" living rooms, Google is reportedly planning a major, channel- and original content-driven overhaul of YouTube. "YouTube is looking to compete with broadcast and cable television ... a goal that requires it to entice users to stay on the website longer, and to convince advertisers that it will reach desirable consumers," reports The Wall Street Journal. What's more, as more viewers watch YouTube from their couches, "The world's most popular video Web site will invest tens of millions of dollars in professionally-produced original programming," reports the Guardian. Indeed, Google is reportedly ready …

Hoping to vastly expand its online footprint, LinkedIn has opened a new developer platform, which, according to ReadWriteWeb, "should bring LinkedIn content, buttons, Twitter-esque 'profile summaries' and more to websites throughout the Web." Beyond developers, the professional social network's new platform is offering an entire suite of plug-ins to bring all manner of content to individual Web sites. "Even better, it's making it as easy as the click of a button and it could offer some serious competition to Facebook's Open Graph on sites that cater to the career-minded," suggests ReadWriteWeb. Addressing site publishers, LinkedIn explains: …

Cutting the proverbial cord, 2 million U.S. households are expected to abandon TV for the Web by year's end. That's according to Convergence Consulting Group, which reports that U.S. cord cutters hit 1.6 million last year. Regarding this year's estimate, TechCrunch say it's "still rather small and the number of cord cutters may very well have peaked last year as cable companies begin to fight back with TV Everywhere offerings." ,br> More much likely, according to TechCrunch, is that consumers will increasingly keep their cable but add Web TV streaming or downloads to their lives. According to Convergence, 18% …

Nearly four-in-10 U.S. teens plan on buying an iPhone in the next six months, according to Piper Jaffray's latest bi-annual survey of high school students. What's more, 20% plan to buy a tablet, which, according to Business Insider, "probably means [an] iPad." For it latest report, Piper asked 4,500 kids about their interest in Apple products and digital music. Presently, 17% already own an iPhone, while 37% plan on buying one in the next 6 months. 22% either own a tablet or have one in their house. Demonstrating the cannibalistic nature of gadgets, only 80% of teens now …

Just in case you were wondering, reports that The New York Times Co. spent north of $40 million to build its digital paywall are "vastly wrong." So insisted Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger during an interview this week with Bill Grueskin at Columbia University. "I'm happy to tell you it's vastly wrong, it was much less. Don't use that number. It's not accurate," Sulzberger told Grueskin according to paidContent. Though, as paidContent notes, "He wouldn't get into the specifics ... and missed an opportunity to set the record straight." Rupert Murdoch' News Corp, by contrast, let it …

Strengthening its premium content position, Netflix has secured the online streaming rights to all seven seasons of "Mad Men." For the whole enchilada, Netflix is reportedly paying the show's producer Lions Gate Entertainment upwards of $100 million. On the news, Variety quips: "Netflix is acting more and more like a well-heeled cable network every day." "As some executives continue to predict that the TV broadcasters and film studios would soon reduce Netflix's streaming-content supply, the Web's top video rental service continues to defy the naysayers," writes CNet. In the words of Digital Trends, …

Not just a magazine anymore, Vice is shortly expected to announced investment partnerships with WPP, along with MTV co-founder Tom Freston, and the Raine Group, a boutique investment firm. Vice -- which The New York Times calls, "a pan-media confederation with a record label, a book label, its own television series and a full-service media agency" -- is also tapping William Morris Endeavor Entertainment and its chief executive, Ari Emanuel, to represent the company's next phase of growth. "We've kind of been on the periphery for a long time," Shane Smith, one of Vice's founders. We said it's …