AOL this morning said it has acquired Pictela, start-up that has developed a promising infrastructure for seamlessly delivering extremely rich, and "high-definition" media via online publishers and social network platforms. AOL did not disclose the terms of the deal, but said the acquisition of Pictela "complements" its so-called "Project Devil," a new online display advertising format that AOL announced in September, and said would "radically improve" the "aesthetic" quality of online advertising. AOL said Pictela would continue to operate as a separate group within AOL's advertising division based in New York. AOL said the acquisition of Pictela …

The Commerce Department is expected to issue recommendations about online privacy on Thursday morning. Industry observers expect the report to call for baseline privacy rules along the lines of fair information practices principles.

According to the just-released third annual report on food/beverage marketers' compliance with their Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) pledges in regard to marketing to children under 12, compliance rates continue to be high. The report from the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which oversees the program's administration and pledge compliance, concludes that, through product reformulation and innovation, major food makers that are participants "continue to achieve steady progress in promoting products to kids that are better for them." Compliance was "excellent" during 2009, with only "a handful" of instances where non-CFBAI-approved products appeared in advertising to …

Consumer group The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has made good on its June warning that it would sue McDonald's if the QSR did not stop offering toy premiums with its children's Happy Meals. The class-action suit, filed today in California Superior Court in San Francisco on behalf of a mother of two residing in Sacramento, is bound to raise the already high level of public debate about food marketing to children in the context of children's obesity issues.  The suit charges that McDonald's is violating California's consumer protection laws because its giveaways of toys tied into …

In response to Federal Trade Commission charges of deceptive advertising, The Dannon Company, Inc. has agreed to drop certain health claims from its marketing for Activia and DanActive probiotic yogurts.   Dannon, owned by French food giant Groupe Danone, also agreed to pay $21 million to settle with 39 states that have been working with the FTC—the largest multi-state attorney general consumer protection settlement ever reached with a food manufacturer, reported Associated Press.  The two states that led the marketing claims charges, Oregon and Tennessee, will receive $1.06 million; the rest will be divided among the remaining states. …

Mogreet, which specializes in MMS (multimedia messaging service) marketing, has begun allowing brands to use its platform to serve third-party ads within messages. To date, companies have used Mogreet's MMS service to push their own video content to mobile users. Now they'll also be able to insert rich media ads into content sent out via MMS. Mobile answers service ChaCha is the first client to use Mogreet's new ad-serving capability. It will offer advertisers the ability to place image or video ads in responses sent in reply to specific questions or keywords texted to ChaCha by users. Founded …

Lexus is, for the first time, talking to consumers about a new vehicle within the realm of Web gaming. The luxury division of Toyota Motor is going after a new customer for Lexus by promoting the new car, a dedicated luxury marque called Lexus CT 200h, through a partnership and integration in Microsoft's Xbox 360 system and the "Halo:Reach" game. The car, which goes on sale in early March at the starting price -- just announced -- of $29,120, will be featured in the gaming platform's Xbox Live "All-Nighter" this Saturday. The program makes Lexus sponsor of the all-night gaming …

Mobile game developer Pocket Gems has landed $5 million in venture funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital and including eBay veteran Michael Dearing, Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and former CEO of StubHub, and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui. The startup, which has released a series of popular social mobile games including Tap Farm and Tap Zoo, plans to use the funding to expand its engineering team and to launching new mobile entertainment titles. Read more here.

With stores already offering big sales on some of the season's hottest items, shoppers are biting. But a new survey from the National Retail Federation reports that the average consumer has only crossed off 49.5% percent of her list. (That's up a bit from last year, when the average person had only finished 46.7% of holiday shopping.) As a result, the Washington, D.C.-based trade groups expects retailers to crank up the price cuts in the season's final few weeks. Still, it's all good: So good, in fact, the NRF has raised its forecast, and now expects the season to …

Time magazine has named Facebook founder-CEO Mark Zuckerberg its 2010 "Person of the Year:" www.TIME.com/poy "For connecting more than half-a-billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before); for creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year," stated Time Editor Rick Stengel.