Forty per cent of the 1,000 most shared Instagram videos last month came from brands, according to new data released today by Unruly. And nine out of ten Instagram video shares occurred on Facebook. Also, proof of Biebermania, unabated--14 of the top 20 shared Instagram videos came from Justin Bieber, with three of his top ones generating over a half million shares. Unruly said 80 …

Mobile marketing startup Iris Mobile has raised $3 million in first-round venture funding from investors led by Origin Ventures and including Illinois Ventures and Hyde Park Venture Partners, among other investors. Started five years ago by a trio of former Motorola employees, the company has developed a platform that lets marketers embed rich content like video, photos and promotions into mobile messages. The Chicago-based company’s clients include Ikea, Cartier and Kellogg’s as well as agencies such as Leo Burnet, 89 Degrees, Edelman and The Marketing Arm. Iris Mobile plans to use the new financing to expand its product development …

WPP this morning reported organic revenue growth for the third quarter of 5%, best of the major holding companies reporting so far. By comparison, Omnicom earlier said its Q3 organic growth was 4.1% while Publicis and Interpublic reported 3.5% and 2.8% growth respectively. Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser wrote that WPP's Q3 performance was "the company's best quarterly results in more than two years." And those results were dragged down a bit by the data and investment division, Wieser said, noting that the holding company would have achieved 5.4% organic growth but for investments to that unit. Geographically, WPP achieved growth …

Foursquare on Wednesday rolled out new tools for publishers that give them more insight on places popular with their followers and which of their “tips” on the social location app are resonating. In the upgraded Foursquare dashboard, publishers can now see a list of the top places people who have "Liked" their Foursquare pages have checked into over the last 30 days. Potentially, publishers could use that information to generate or inform advertising on their own Web sites or print publications. A screenshot of Time Out New York’s dashboard in a Foursquare blog post today showed the Barclay’s Center …

As part of the 3M Hire Our Heroes campaign, a number of the nation's military veterans who work in auto body repair shops and their shop owners who nominated them are headed to the November NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Texas.

Yahoo was the most visited U.S. Web site for the third month in a row in September, according to the latest com Score data. Yahoo last month drew 197.8 million unique visitors, followed by Google, with 191.4 million, and Microsoft, with 170.5 million. Facebook and AOL rounded out the top five, with 142.2 million, and 112.4 million visitors, respectively. Before July, the last time Yahoo was ahead of Google in the rankings was May 2011, underscoring traffic gains made under Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. During the company’s third-quarter conference call, she noted that traffic had increased 20% to …

Augie Ray, formerly director of social media at Prudential Financial, tweeted this afternoon that he’s joined American Express as director, voice of customer strategy. The card giant did not immediately respond to a media request to confirm the hiring. Before joining Prudential last year, Ray was executive director of community and collaboration at USAA, and before that was a senior analyst at Forrester focusing on social media. Ray’s observations on the social media and digital space have drawn 17,801 followers on Twitter. American Express has earned a reputation as a social innovator through its Small Business Saturday program, its Sync …