Google said it's launching a new venture capital investment program around artificial intelligence (AI), according to an Axios report. Axios says  the new platform will be led by engineers and not by VCs. While the move isn't surprising, it's a sign that Google is serious about investing in AI companies and technologies.

Facebook has hired Nada Stirratt, former CEO of mobile ad firm Verve, as its new vice president of global marketing solutions for the U.S. and Canada, and named Ty Ahmad-Taylor, former CEO and president of consumer electronics firm THX, vice president of product marketing, according to a Business Insider report. 

Google announced new products and services that it hopes will encourage marketers to spend more money with it. The Wall Street Journal offered a rundown of the announcements Google made at its advertising and analytics event this week. Google launched a product to help marketers measure how specific ads drive in-store sales. "Through third-party data partnerships, Google says it has access to information regarding 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the U.S. Using that data, and on an anonymized basis, the company says it will be able to tell marketers how their online ad campaigns translate to cash …

Aiming to help media companies sell digital video advertising on their Web sites, Facebook is testing a new automation tool it calls "Audience Direct." According to a Wall Street Journal report, Audience Direct encourages publishers "to list video ad inventory for sale from across their properties, and to specify pricing. Marketers will then have the ability to log on to the system and to purchase ad space from specific publishers on a self-service basis, potentially streamlining the buying and selling process for both parties." In addition, marketers can indicate which types of users they want to show ads to. "For …

Nick Hawley, head of screen strategy and innovation for Amnet ANZ, argues that programmatic isn't entirely to blame for the problems advertisers are having with brand safety. "Programmatic is merely the activation mechanism; monetising someone else’s unsavoury content that has landed on an open source platform is a different problem entirely. Programmatic at its core is leveraging data and machine learning to efficiently buy media in an automated fashion. That said, programmatic is only as strong as its weakest link. In this case it is the platforms not taking responsibility for having robust procedures that mitigate risk," Hawley writes in …

Cutting to the heart of the brand safety issue, The Guardian got access to Facebook's guidelines for moderators to evaluate whether content is offensive and hate-filled and therefore, subject to removal. The newspaper said Facebook permits users to livestream video of people attempting to injure themselves, because it “doesn’t want to censor or punish people in distress who are attempting suicide.” By contrast, Facebook will remove video footage when it determines there’s no longer an opportunity to help the person, according to the documents obtained by The Guardian. Monika Bickert, ‎Facebook’s head of global policy management, told the paper: “No …

Twitter named Bruce Falck to the post of general manager of revenue product, reporting to CEO Jack Dorsey, the Wall Street Journal reports. Falck was CEO of ad tech firm Turn and prior to that, he was COO of video ad provider BrightRoll. He also worked at Google on its display ad network and ad exchange. The appointment comes at a crucial time for Twitter as it struggles to grow and monetize its advertising business.

Ad tech firm Rubicon Project has filed a counter lawsuit against the Guardian newspaper in response to the Guardian's lawsuit filed in March for "breach of contract". The Guardian accused Rubicon of failing to disclose fees to advertisers that purchased the newspaper's ad inventory. Rubicon's countersuit, according to Campaign, says it was "entitled" to charge the fees as they were in the contract. In addition Rubicon says the Guardian broke the contract "because it allocated some of its ad inventory to other intermediaries," according to Campaign. Meanwhile, Rubicon Project President & CEO Michael Barrett who's been on the job for …

Apple acquired artificial intelligence (AI) startup Lattice Data for $200 million, according to a TechCrunch report. Lattice focuses on "transforming unstructured data–what they refer to as dark data–into structured data. Unstructured data is often found in text, images, video and other media and is growing rapidly in the digital age. Some estimates going back two decades estimate that 70-90% of all data is unstructured," Voicebot.ai reports. That publication said many AI deals involve unstructured data. For example, "driverless cars review image data to determine whether to stop at a red light or avoid a collision with a pedestrian. Voice …

Google said it's changing how it enforces its ads policies: "It will now strike ads from individual web pages that violate its ads standards. That means Google will effectively be cutting fewer websites out of its ad network," Recode reports. The upshot is that sites may also be suspended on the AdSense platform for violations. Simiarly,  publishers may also be suspended or disabled from using AdSense. "Previously, a publisher’s full site would be suspended from ad placements if only one page violated Google’s policies," Recode said. Google and publishers in the AdSense network share ad revenue so the …