StrikeAd, which operates a demand-side platform for mobile advertising, has teamed with ad technology firm Cognitive Match to offer clients improved campaign results. Through their partnership, StrikeAd will incorporate Cognitive Match’s software for optimizing ad creative on the fly into its StrikeAd Fusion platform. The company promises the step will lead to higher engagement, reach and overall ROI. Cognitive Match says its solution combines machine-learning and semantic technologies to create hundreds of daa points to make make split-second decisions about what content to display for each impressions. The idea is to marry that capability with StrikeAd’s real-time, mobile ad platform …

Visible Measures this morning announced that it has received accreditation from the Media Rating Council for a range of its core video metrics products, including its True Reach platform for measuring the brand performance of online video across "paid, owned and earned" impressions. The audit follows a year-long audit by the MRC, which is Madison Avenue's official media ratings watchdog.

Microsoft edged out Yahoo in January again to become the second largest Web property behind Google, according to the latest data from comScore. Unique visitors to Microsoft sites including MSN surpassed 179 million last month, about 2 million ahead of Yahoo’s total traffic. Google was No. 1 with more than 187 million visitors. Rounding out the top five were Facebook (163.5 million) and Amazon (110 million). The comScore report also underscored the growing popularity of virtual bulletin board Pinterest, which was the third fastest-growing site in January behind IRS.gov and ED.gov (U.S. Department of Education). Google Ad Network led …

IBM issued a series of reports during the holiday season showing a growing proportion of online retail traffic and commerce coming from mobile devices. The latest IBM data shows the same pattern playing out on Valentine’s Day. It found 14.5% of all online sessions on retail sites came from a mobile device on Feb. 14, while mobile accounted for 10.1% of all online sales on Valentine's Day. The share of mobile sales more than doubled from last year's 3.9%. Other details from the study: --A record number of consumers made impulse buys via their mobile device with …

It's been a while since I raced to see Kathy Ireland gracing the cover of a magazine, and the last time most likely was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition some decades ago, but I couldn't resist checking out this link when a publicist representing Kathy Ireland Worldwide sent me a pitch about her latest modeling gig: The cover of Forbes magazine.

No sports surprise here -- the New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin has rocketed to the top of the charts when it comes to social media buzz, and traditional TV viewership of NBA games he has appeared in. Nielsen/McKinsey's NM Incite group there has been a 73% increase in TV viewership for NY Knicks games on ESPN and MSG. The biggest individual game was the nationally-aired game on ESPN on  February 10 between the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks. It was the most-watched Friday night regular season NBA game on the network so far this season with just over …

That's what Cyndi Lauper just asked the ANA TV & Everything Video crowd in between her sets at the forum this afternoon.

Here's an ironic moment for you. I'm sitting here at the ANA's TV & Everything Video Forum, where Cyndi Lauper is performing -- live! -- and she just jumped off the stage and mingled with the audience -- a roomful of the biggest marketers in the world -- and she's singing "Money Changes Everything." But I'm sure she meant it in the good way.

Facebook will open up its Timeline feature for brands later this month, according to an Ad Age report citing executives familiar with the company’s plans. To date, the new photo-centric profile feature had been available only to individual Facebook users. But the company is expected to formally introduce Timeline for brands at its first-ever fMC event, a day-long conference in New York on Feb. 29 geared toward marketers. Facebook had announced it would extend Timeline for companies when it first announced the new feature and revamped profile page in September. Since then, its been gradually rolling out Timeline to …

Not surprisingly, that quip came from CBS research chief Dave Poltrack, who was talking about the role of so-called "second screen" and "social TV" experiences with me and New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliott during the coffee break this morning at the ANA's TV & Everything Video Forum.