BSkyB has been criticised by media watchdog Ofcom for breaching advertising rules during its' channel carriage dispute with Virgin Media cable. Virgin complained about a series of ads referring to the loss of Sky channels on Virgin. Ofcom said that undue prominence was given to telling Virgin viewers they could switch to Sky’s service. It […]

The Chinese love affair with the Internet will see digital ad spend increase 40 per cent to $5.2 billion next year, making the booming Asian online economy roughly the same size as the current UK market, according to a report. The study by KPMG estimates that the total ad spend on all media in the […]

Virgin has been reprimanded by regulators for misleading consumers about its broadband speeds in a recent advertising campaign. In response to a complaint by Virgin's rival BSkyB, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled Virgin's print and poster advertisements did not make sufficiently clear that customers could experience connections below the advertised 20 megabits per second. Meanwhile, […]

Virgin Media is launching its first targeted advertising trial on its VOD platform featuring advertisers such as Kelloggs and Royal Mail. Using ad insertion technology from SeaChange, ads will be inserted before and after on demand content in real time. Virgin Media’s trial, in its north London cable franchise, will match ads to programme genres, […]

The European Commission has again written to the government for an explanation of UK authorities’ response to BT’s allegedly illegal secret trials of Phorm’s ISP adware system. Brussels still wants answers after a September letter from the UK goverment failed to address legal issues surrounding past deployments of the technology, and didn’t provide details about […]

Internet advertising spend is providing buoyancy for traditional media, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, surging 21 per cent year on year to £1.68 billion (E2.14bn) in the first six months of 2008. The resilience of internet ad spend in the downturn turned what would have been a 4.6 per cent year-on-year decline in UK advertising […]

BT's new ads for its BT Vision service poke fun at subscription-heavy pay-TV rivals seeing a man flicking through a friend's fictional pay TV service and joking with him about the number of channels he pays for but never watches. The new ads, part of a £11 million (E14m) TV campaign, focus on how BT […]

Aim-listed Phorm, the internet advertising group that announced a tie up with BT this week, made an pre-tax loss of £13.7m (E17.2m) for the first half of 2008, an increase of 52 per cent from the loss of £9.1m in the same period in 2007. However, in spite of the losses, Phorm still has a […]

Alcatel-Lucent is introducing a new advertising delivery solution for IPTV networks that can enhance the TV ad model by enabling service providers to distribute ads to distinct groups of consumers. Alcatel-Lucent’s Targeted and Interactive IPTV Advertising Solution is designed to increase IPTV revenue by making it possible for advertisers to reach the most attractive potential […]

Aim-listed Phorm, the internet advertising group that announced a tie up with BT this week, made an pre-tax loss of £13.7m (E17.2m) for the first half of 2008, an increase of 52 per cent from the loss of £9.1m in the same period in 2007. However, in spite of the losses, Phorm still has a […]