Career News 24/7: The 10 Things In Advertising You Need To Know Today

January 14, 2015

Good morning. Here's everything you need to know before you head into your first meeting.

1. German retailers Aldi and Lidl are pummeling the major UK supermarkets. The latest data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that only Aldi, Lidl and upmarket grocer Waitrose posted year-on-year sales growth over the festive period.

2. There's a new theory on why Google might benefit from withholding AdSense payments from publishers. One website owner — who claims his site earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through AdSense only for Google to suddenly reverse his payment back to his advertisers — suggests such reversals form the same function as "kickbacks" to advertisers, encouraging them to spend more.

3. McDonald's is being slammed for using tragedies such as 9/11 and the Boston bombings to sell burgers in its latest brand ad. Critics of the ad have called it exploitative and tasteless. The Washington Post described the ad as "tone deaf" and a "disarming minute of mushy corporate propaganda."

4. Teads — the video adtech company that merged with Ebuzzing last year — has raised a $30.2 million funding round. The company has secured £51.4 million ($77.6 million) in financing to date and says it generated £63.5 million ($96.3 million) in revenue last year, up 65% on 2013.

5. Fresh from announcing a $377 million cost-cutting plan, Tesco has launched a Google Glass app. The Tesco Grocery Glass app allows users to browse items and add them to their basket via the headset's voice commands or scan barcodes using the in-built camera.

6. Marissa Mayer once revealed a "dirty little secret" about Google's famous "20% time." This policy supposedly allowed Googlers to spend 20% of their working time on personal projects, but Mayer said it's really "120% time…stuff you've got to do beyond your regular job."

8. ESPN's College Football Playoff National Championship scored more than 33 million viewers on Monday, AdAge reports. That surpassed the previous cable audience record set by the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day, which averaged 28.3 million viewers.