Mobile marketing company Velti today announced acquiring mobile CRM firm Air2Web for about $19 million in cash. The move is aimed at expanding Velti's global footprint, especially in India, and building its business among carriers and different industry categories such as financial services. Atlanta-based Air2Web counts AT&T, Comcast, American Express, HSBC, Barclays Bank and Citigroup among its clients. Through the merger, Air2Web said its customers would benefit from Velti's full range of mobile marketing services including media planning and buying, ad serving,  development of mobile sites and landing pages, and analytics. Separately, Velti said it would acquire …

Twitter launched sales efforts in the United Kingdom Thursday. Advertisers in the U.K. can now tap into geo-target ads by country in the Promoted Products suite, including Promoted Trends. Twitter U.K. General Manager Tony Wang said active use in the U.K. has grown 95% since the first of the year. He points to several factors contributing to the growth. The company acquired TweetDeck, he said, calling it "one of the brightest lights of London's bustling tech scene," and offices that recently opened in London to support advertisers. Twitter also announced a partnership with Sky to launch the first …

Clicking ain't for kids, apparently. People 55 and older click on online ads more when compared to other age groups, according to the latest JustAsk! survey from audience research and measurement company Crowd Science. The study found 76% of Baby Boomers had clicked on online ads during the preceding six months, compared to just 58% of 15 to 24 year-olds. However, the generations were joined in their annoyance with "being shown ads that don't apply to [them]," with nearly half of the younger (46%) and older (49%) age groups sharing that sentiment. Among other findings: -Just …

'Tis the season to read holiday tea leaves, and three just-released forecasts predict that consumer spending will be lukewarm, at best. At the low end, the International Council of Shopping Centers is looking for a 2.2% rise. And while the trade group points out that there are many components to such forecast, the overall trend is tepid: "No matter which metric of performance is used, ICSC projects 2011 U.S. holiday sales are likely to advance at a slower pace than in 2010 as strong economic headwinds continue to persist," says Michael P. Niemira, ICSC's chief economist, in its release. …

Traffiq has teamed with Nielsen to include the media research firm's @Plan target-marketing service for planning and optimizing online display campaigns. Traffiq's buy-side platform handles everything from planning and RFP distribution to order execution, optimization and billing. By adding Nielsen @Plan to its system, Traffiq said it will be able to provide advertisers with a single, verified source of information for selecting sites that will fit with campaign goals. "Previously, the media choices in the platform were appended by publisher-provided data from various sources," said Traffiq CEO Nick Pahade, in announcing the partnership. "This made it difficult …

Honda Power Equipment has signed a sales and marketing agreement with John Deere (Deere & Company) to sell Honda premium power products at participating John Deere dealerships in the United States. John Deere makes agricultural, forestry, lawn, construction, grounds and turf care equipment. Initial shipments of Honda inventory to John Deere dealerships will begin on a rolling basis in 2012. Under the terms of the agreement, Honda's walk behind lawnmowers, generators, tillers, water pumps and snowblowers will be available for sale at participating John Deere dealerships. Honda power products will continue to be available at Honda Power Equipment …

Lincoln Financial Group has named Jamie DePeau as CMO effective immediately. DePeau will report directly to Lisa Buckingham, Lincoln Financial's Chief Human Resources Officer. DePeau comes to Lincoln Financial from TIAA-CREF where she served as SVP of Marketing. Prior to joining TIAA-CREF, DePeau held marketing leadership positions at Medco Health Solutions, MCI and NYNEX.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey said the company has "no immediate plans" for a Simpsons cable channel, despite reports to the contrary, which he attributed to the need of daily newspapers to fill space. But Carey didn't rule out a possible channel dedicated to Simpsons content either. "There are a lot of Simpsons fans out there," he noted, indicating that the company is considering what to do with the series library after the current syndication runs its course. "We think there is a bigger opportunity than just a second syndication cycle," he said. "We have an opportunity to …

Kathy Pilhuj, who was senior vice president of data collection at Scarborough Research and a leading innovator in the market research industry, has passed away. She was 61 years old. Pilhuj's main responsibility at Scarborough was managing the company's two telephone interviewing centers. She was well known as an innovator, developing a number of industry best practices such as empirically-proven hiring tests, continuous every call measurement of interviewer performance and an over-arching quality/response rate concept called "best use of sample." She also led the programming, IT and data collection teams and was responsible for dozens of servers and data …

ConAgra Foods saw fiscal Q1 earnings drop 42% as a result of input costs, the company reported. The company's overall sales rose 9.5%, and its consumer food sales gained 4.4%, but its cost of goods leapt 15%, pushing gross margin down from 23.2% to 19.5%. ConAgra raised prices on 90% to 95% of its product portfolio in its fourth quarter. It now has bumped up its estimate of cost inflation for its consumer foods segment this fiscal to to 9% to 10% (from 7% to 8%). However, it has not changed its earnings outlook. ConAgra, …