Well-regarded media agency veteran Peter Gardiner, partner and chief media officer at Interpublic's full-service Deutsch agency, is departing the shop effective today, the agency confirmed. He's been with the shop since 2000. Gardiner said he is involved with several media and tech startups with which he plans to get more active with details to follow in the coming weeks. Deutsch NY CEO Val DiFebo credited Gardiner with helping to grow Deutsch's media offering "at a time when many agencies were unbundling their media operations. He was an important part of the agency's success."

Barnes & Noble on Thursday reported a net loss for its fiscal third quarter as sales in its Nook business, consisting of devices and digital content, fell 26% to $316 million . The country’s largest bookstore chain posted a net loss of $6.1 million, or 18 cents a share for the quarter ended December 26, compared to a profit of $52 million, or 71 cents a year ago. Revenue fell 9% to $2.23 billion. Analysts had project a decline to $2.4 billion. Barnes & Noble had warned of disappointing Nook results earlier this month weaker than expected sales of …

Mobile ad network Jumptap has named Brian Cohen as its new chief financial officer. Cohen most recently served as CFO of software maker DynamicOps, acquired last year by VMWare. Before that, he had been CFO of security software firm Q1 Labs, acquired by IBM in 2011. He began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The company on Thursday also announced hiring former BrightRoll executive Lewis Rothkopf as SVP, partnerships network development and publisher acquisition. He has previously held senior management roles and NBC Universal and DoubleClick. Cohen will be based in Jumptap’s Boston headquarters and Rothkopf in its New York City office. …

Following up on data it released last week on advertising results on the Facebook Exchange (FBX), AdRoll today provided further finding relating to return on investment from campaigns on the re-targeting platform. Among other things, the study of 468 advertisers that ran both standard Web retargeting and FBX campaigns during the last six months of 2012 found FBX delivered lower CPMs and CPCs while Web retargeting led to higher click-through rates.  The firm concluded the two methods of retargeting were complementary. AdRoll President Adam Berke explained in a Wednesday blog post that the company has since gotten requests for …

Facebook on Wednesday announced it will begin allowing marketers to work with third-party data providers to better target ads through its Custom Audiences tool for retargeting existing customers on the site by uploading their email address or phone numbers. Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom and BlueKai are the outside data providers Facebook will let marketers partner with to run Custom Audiences ads. Businesses that already work with any of these companies can now use the same information they’ve used elsewhere to create campaigns on Facebook. Facebook said it would also work with the data companies to create pre-defined categories …

Handing a victory to Facebook, a divided federal appellate court has decided against hearing additional arguments challenging the company's $9.5 million Beacon settlement.

Instagram today announced hitting 100 million monthly active users, less than a month after reaching 90 million. The milestone follows a controversy that erupted in December after the New York Post reported the photo-sharing app had lost about a quarter of its daily active users in the wake of its terms-of-service debacle. Instagram-owner Facebook called the data “inaccurate,” maintaining it continued to see steady growth both in registered and active users of Instagram. Facebook subsequently cut off public access to the daily user data used in the Post story. Instagram is the third highest-ranked Android app and the …

Electronic cigarette marketer Njoy has selected Horizon Media for media and planning duties after a review, the client has confirmed. The scope of work includes traditional, digital, social and mobile. Electronic cigarettes do not have the same government imposed ad restrictions (such as the nearly 40-year ban on TV ads) because they are not tobacco products although they do contain nicotine. In fact, Njoy kicked off a new campaign in December for its Njoy King brand that includes TV, print, social media, in-store, and events. The New York Times estimated that the company would spend up to $14 million on …

Smartphone users in developed countries are the less likely to interact with mobile ads than those in emerging economies, according to a recent Nielsen report on mobile use globally. In some cases, that may be because they see fewer ads than users in mature markets, creating a novelty factor. Indian smartphone owners, for instance, are among the least likely to receive ads, but are also among the most receptive. They’re also more comfortable providing some kind of personal information if it means getting more relevant ads. Smartphone users globally were most willing to provide personal information in return for …

Salesforce.com on Tuesday introduced Service Cloud Mobile, the first in a new series of new software offerings to power sales operations and CRM across devices. With its Touch and Touch Platform released last year, Salesforce said it’s “doubling down” on mobile with its latest product extending its cloud-based services to mobile devices. Cloud Service Mobile allows co-browsing on any device between sales agents and customers, mobile chat, and access to community support from relevant peers or experts. The co-browsing feature, for running Web demos and the like, will be available in the second half of 2013, but pricing …