How protective have consumers become of their digital privacy? Well, a clear majority (74%) now say they would rather have their homes broken into than have their smartphones (or cloud storage platforms) hacked. That's according to new research conducted on behalf of cloud services startup MiMedia, and which surveyed 1,120 U.S. consumers for its findings.

When Instagram launched link ads, late last year, the plan was to help brands elicit more "actions" from users -- like driving Web site clicks, mobile app installs and site conversions. Unfortunately for the social giant and its brand partners, that didn't happen. Why?

Ready for more impressive figures from comScore's 2016 U.S. Mobile App report? Well, thanks to huge gains in mobile, audiences are up by 36% among top digital media properties, over the past two years. Specifically, mobile audiences have grown 81% in that time period, while desktop has actually experienced a 4% decline. Increasingly, however, mobile audience growth is being driven by mobile Web properties, which are now actually bigger and growing faster than apps.

Thanks in large part to the mobile app boom, digital media usage time has exploded since 2013. Over the past three years, in fact, total digital media time spent has grown 53%, according to comScore's 2016 U.S. Mobile App report.

Six months or so after inviting brands and businesses to build bots into Facebook Messenger, the network has swelled to around 30,000 tiny computer programs. That's up from about 11,000 in late July.

Does AT&T need a refresher course on existing net neutrality rules? How else can you explain the company's decision to exempt DirecTV streaming video from data caps on its mobile Web service?

Businesses looking to grow their international mobile audiences now have a friend in Facebook. The social giant is offering businesses a new Lookalike Audiences tool, which is designed to help them reach customers in new countries who are similar to their current customer base. They can do this by uploading a list of existing customers or high-potential leads.

Now you see it, now you don't. Yep, ahead of its official launch, Apple mistakenly tweeted out the iPhone 7's sexiest specifications, on Wednesday. We learned at that moment that the latest iPhone is a lot like the last several iterations -- but with a new water-resistant shell, dual camera system, stereo speakers, and a darker black color scheme. As was widely anticipated (and feared by many), the iPhone 7 also lacks a dedicated headphone jack. In other words, the iPhone 7 might not be shiny and new enough to sufficiently brighten Apple's struggling hardware outlook.

What did we do with our smartphones before the advent of apps? Make phone calls?! Whatever it was, we're doing a lot less -- or doing it with an app, new research shows. Indeed, apps now account for half of all the time average Janes and Joes spend on their smart devices, comScore finds.

Google, the search company that knows all your passwords, shopping preferences, and pertinent medical and financial information, announced this week that it's building a search function into its app that will allow it to search through other apps on your phone. Being able to identify shopper intent -- how and why users use certain apps -- is valuable information that will help advertisers be more accurate with their ads.