Google posted solid Q1 earnings amid the controversy over brand safety and YouTube. The Wall Street Journal reports that advertisers should keep in mind five things from the earnings report: The fallout from brands' suspension of advertising on YouTube may hit in Q2 and Google executives remain confident about revenue growth on YouTube, Google is taking action on brand safety issues, the mobile search business is growing, machine learning advances will help improve ads, and TV advertising on YouTube TV isn't a priority yet.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said that mobile advertising represented more than half of all digital ad spending in the U.S. in 2016. The IAB and PwC reported that mobile ad spending accounted for 51% of $72.5 billion in total digital ad spending in the U.S. last year. Mobile advertising increased 77% to $36.6 billion last year, while digital ad spending overall rose 22% in the U.S. from the prior year. Where video advertising is concerned, spending rose 53% to $9.1 billion, while mobile video spending increased by 145% year-over-year to nearly $4.2 billion, the IAB reported.

Facebook has begun testing a new feature within its Related Articles function in a bid to squash fake news, according to a TechCrunch report. Facebook will ask readers  whether they think a a headline is true or not, and see other perspectives on the topic before they read articles. The Related Articles widget usually appears when readers return to the newsfeed after opening a link. Under the new feature, Facebook will also "show Related Articles including third-party fact checkers before you read an article about a topic that many people are discussing. Facebook says, 'That should provide people easier access …

The Huffington Post is now HuffPost, part of an effort to rebrand aand retool, after the departure of its founding editor, Arianna Huffington, last summer, the Wall Street Journal reports. With a logo redesign, the Web site was also overhauled to enable new ad formats, including more video ads and native advertising. In addition, the redesign enabled HuffPost to reduce its roster of ad-tech partners, a move that it hopes will speed page load times and other performance measures, the Journal reports.

As Google prepares to report on earnings this week, the New York Times takes a look at the role of search advertising for advertisers and Google. Search advertising, it opines, remains critical and that the ad space adjacent to consumer search results is extremely valuable. Further, since Google launched search 20 years ago, it has "allocated more space to ads and created new forms of them. The ad creep on Google has pushed 'organic' (unpaid) search results farther down the screen, an effect even more pronounced on the smaller displays of smartphones. The changes are profound for retailers and brands …

Have the NewFronts, which were created in 2012 as digital advertising's response to the TV upfronts, run their course? The Wall Street Journal notes that a few media companies including AOL, BuzzFeed, and Fullscreen have opted out of the NewFronts or reduced the scope of their plans. Some media executives wonder if the dog-and-pony shows are living up to the hype. "Doug Ray, president of product and innovation at Dentsu Aegis Network, said that when the NewFronts were started, big marketers needed help understanding the web video marketplace. That mission has largely been accomplished, he said, particularly as giant platforms …

Google is looking to release a new ad-blocking feature in the mobile and desktop versions of its Chrome web browser, the Wall Street Journal reports. The new feature, which can be turned on by default, will be able to filter out online ad types that have the potential to deliver a poor consumer experience. The ad types that fall into that category are defined by the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry trade group that's devised standards for troublesome ad types such as pop-ups, auto-playing video ads, and others. "In one possible application Google is considering, it may choose to …

The Verge reports the failure of Facebook's Instant Articles to live up to its promise. While publishers were initially excited about the potential for Instant Articles to help them generate revenue, that wasn't the focus for Facebook. "Facebook decided from the start that publishing a story using the Instant Articles format would not automatically improve its ranking in the News Feed. In practice, Instant Articles typically do reach more people, because people are more likely to read and share them. But as the format spread, competition increased, and any advantage to using Instant Articles was blunted within months. Given that …

Computer science researchers last week released a browser extension that blocks ads on Facebook and supersedes publishers that disable ad blockers. The new "perceptual ad blocker" identifies promoted content by checking for non-HTML signs of an ad, such as specific words, sizes, and shading that would indicate sponsored posts. The researchers said: "We believe that due to the architecture of web browsers, there’s an inherent asymmetry that favors users and ad blockers. We have devised and prototyped several ad blocking techniques that work radically differently from current ones. We don’t claim to …

As publishers grow increasingly frustrated by the number of vendors they have to work with in ad tech, they're looking to create their own ad tech stack and marketing cloud to understand which ad sources are bringing them the most revenue on any given day, the Wall Street Journal reports.  For example, Meredith Corp. has partnered with  Staq, a company that will help the publisher better understand data sources, streamline their ad business, and untangle tech issues. Publishers are challenged by working with a multitude of ad tech firms to better understand ad measurement and performance, data, …