Thanks to a campaign organized by a 13-year-old girl in New Jersey, Hasbro says it is introducing a gender-neutral Easy Bake Oven that will appeal to little boys as well as little girls. Change.org is giving all the credit to McKenna Pope, an 8th grader who gathered 44,000 signatures, as well as the support of celebrity chef Bobby Flay and widespread media coverage. Change.org says Hasbro invited the girl to its Rhode Island headquarter to show off gender- neutral color schemes, with the black and silver version expected to debut in February. Marketing of the classic toy will now also …

Nielsen this morning announced an "exclusive multi-year" deal with Twitter to create a "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating" service. Nielsen said it would be a syndicated service that would provide a "standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter," effective with the start of the fall 2013 TV season.

Mobile marketing firm Velti has named Jeff Ross as its new chief financial officer, starting early next year. Ross, who served as CFO at enterprise software company Sybase, will join Velti January 7. The company said current CFO Wilson Cheung will remain at Velti in a role in connection with its Asian markets. The move follows Velti’s announcement last month of plans to sell off assets in the Balkan countries, Greece and other markets to focus on business in stronger regions including the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere in Western Europe. For the third quarter, Velti reported a loss of …

The Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) has a new CEO. George Gallate, who ran Havas's digital network in 1996, and led its expansion globally, is joining digital-marketing and search agency RKG as CEO, effective Jan. 1. Gallate, most recently global chairman of Havas Worldwide Digital, will remain in New York. He succeeds RKG co-founder and CEO George Michie, who will take on the role of Chief Marketing Scientist. A privately held agency, RKG has grown 60% within the past year. The agency's clients include Drugstore.com, Eddie Bauer, Express, Herman Miller, Jones New York, Urban Outfitters, and Zales.

Weather Channel CEO David Kenny is out and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin is in as part of a broader shake-up of Yahoo’s board of directors announced, confirming a New York Times report earlier Thursday. Yahoo said Kenny, who joined the board in the spring of 2011, had decided to leave along with Intuit CEO Brad Smith, to focus on their respective companies. Kenny has formerly served as president of Akamai and CEO Digitas as well as managing partner of Publicis’ VivaKi unit. Levchin, whose appointment to the board is effective immediately, also serves as chairman of the …

Affluent shoppers are 15% more likely to make an online purchase across all categories than less affluent shoppers, and on average spent 19% more per purchase, according to an analysis of ecommerce behavior between Black Friday and Cyber Monday by Martini Media and comScore.

Facebook today rolled out some privacy features aimed at improving users' ability to control some data about them.

Delivery Agent, which powers e-commerce and marketing initiatives for television networks, has received a $5 million strategic investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, the venture capital arm of the Samsung Group. The San Francisco-based company said it will use the financing to “aggressively expand and manage” commerce applications tied to entertainment content across smart TVs and mobile devices. Delivery Agent provides the digital technology that allows consumers to buy products they see on shows across networks such as NBC Universal, Fox, CBS, Discovery Communications and HBO. In addition to online and in mobile, the company most recently began powering …

Marking its 150th anniversary this year, renowned toy retailer FAO Schwarz has launched its first mobile app in partnership with eBay. The FAO Schwarz Gift Finder iPhone app allows users to get gift recommendations by selecting from criteria including product category, a child’s age range and gender, and price range. Once an item is selected, users can make a purchase through the FAO Schwarz storefront after logging in with their eBay account information at checkout. Given that FAO Schwarz is owned by Toys “R” Us, one might have expected to the toy-selling giant to power m-commerce for the app …

Taking a page out of the online ad sales industry, and signaling that TV advertising sales processing may be growing equally as complicated, Katz Television Group today announced the formation of a new "Ad Sales Operations" unit. Led by industry vet Michael Lawless, who serves as vice president-director of the unit, Katz says it was created to "bring local television stations into the national marketplace for unwired business. The new division pools best practices to reduce redundancies and eliminate time-consuming order processes for all three Katz TV Group companies: Continental Television Sales, Eagle Television Sales and Millennium Sales & Marketing."