Yammer, which powers social networking services for companies, has raised $85 million in its fifth round of funding, bringing its total financing to $142 million. Draper Fisher Jurvetson led the round with participation from  new investors including Meritech Capital Partners, Capricorn Investment Group and Khosla Ventures. In less than four years, Yammer says it has attracted over 4 million corporate, including employees at more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Last year it tripled sales and headcount. The company will use the latest funding for potential strategic acquisitions as well as for building brand awareness. In that vein, …

Mediaocean, the new company being formed by the just approved merger of Donovan Data Systems and MediaBank will be an 'open platform' operating system with an API enabling agency clients and their third-party developers to plug seamlessly into it, according to the company's merger approval announcement.

The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the merger of Donovan Data Systems and MediaBank into a new company that will be called MediaOcean.

A recent campaign on Change.org protesting working conditions at Apple’s China-based factories drew 250,000 signatures. A new effort on the nonprofit site is taking on AT&T over its policy of throttling usage of wireless customers with unlimited data plans. A petition calling on the carrier to stop slowing down data speeds for unlimited subscribers has drawn 8,000 supporters so far. The campaign was started by AT&T customer Jane Foody, who said the company threatened to throttle her data because she falls within the top 5% of data users in here area. Change.org said the effort is one of 50 petitions …

James Murdoch has officially stepped down as executive chairman of News Corp's British newspaper publishing subsidiary, and will focus on the company's international TV operations. He will remain deputy COO of News Corp. The move follows intense scrutiny of News Corp.'s News International division's role in the U.K.'s phone-hacking scandal.

Boston-based Hill Holliday may be known for helping consumer marketers craft great brands, but they just announced some news related to the questionable name its own latest branding initiative, "Project Beacon." That's right, the same name that most people on Madison Avenue would associate with one of the industry's biggest digital marketing blunders, Facebook's ill-fated Project Beacon, which was shut down following howls of protests from users and consumer advocacy groups, because of its ability to target ads to Facebook users and their friends based on their personal information.

Twitter said Tuesday it will expand its mobile advertising options in connection with the latest updates to its iPhone and Android apps. With the upgrades, “promoted accounts” and “promoted tweets” will be added to the timeline on its mobile applications for both platforms. Until now, promoted trends and promoted tweets were available only through a search page when someone accessed Twitter on iPhone or Android or the mobile Web (m.twitter.com). Promoted accounts and promoted tweets have been available on the mobile Web for several months. “Initially, a small number of users may see Promoted Tweets near the top of their …

The American Association of Advertising Agencies has tapped Peter Kosmala to serve as senior vice president, government relations.

Demand-side platform Turn has released updated features for its service including brand safety controls, contextual targeting and video ad optimization. The first enhancement lets advertisers avoid placing ads next to content that doesn’t align with a brand’s goals. The contextual upgrade lets advertisers create custom rules for buying inventory next to specific kinds of Web page content. A travel advertiser might only want to place ads on Web pages about warm weather, for instance. Providing the contextual data are AdSafe Media, Crystal Semantics and Peer39. The video optimization feature allows marketers to adjust the price paid for in-stream or …

Digital agency 360i Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with social software maker Expion to provide clients with the tools to launch Facebook campaigns spanning earned and paid media. In connection with the alliance, 360i parent company Dentsu Network West is taking a minority stake in Expion. By teaming with Expion, whose clients include H&R Block, Applebee’s, and Barnes & Noble, 360i says it can offer brands a more holistic platform allowing brands to align advertising with content development on Facebook to encourage deeper interaction. Besides giving brands the ability to publish and share content on Facebook and other social …