Facebook unveils video ads, features
Facebook Inc. released its long-awaited video-advertising product last week, as the world’s largest social network moves to diversify its revenue by tapping into television marketing budgets.
The 15-second spots, which Facebook began testing in December and delayed several times, are being offered to select U.S. ad partners. The promotions will be rolled out into users’ news feeds in late April or early May. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is also testing two new features that marketers can apply to its ads - one for scheduling what times of day an ad appears and another for setting a promotion’s reach and frequency, said Brian Boland, Facebook’s vice president of ads product marketing.
Facebook, which has said it won’t increase how often it shows ads to people, is bolstering its ad-product lineup as it seeks to charge more for higher-quality promotions. The company is going after the lucrative television-ad market, with marketers planning to spend almost 60 percent more on TV than on digital media this year, according to ZenithOptimedia, a research unit of Publicis Groupe SA. Internet ads in the U.S. are projected to reach $43 billion, with TV advertising garnering $66.8 billion.
Mt. Gox allowed trades after bitcoin loss
Mt. Gox Co., the bankrupt bitcoin exchange, allowed customers to continue trading the virtual currency for more than two weeks after discovering it had lost “hundreds of thousands” of bitcoins.
The company halted all withdrawals Feb. 7 upon finding it had lost bitcoins owned by customers and itself.
Trading continued until Feb. 24, when an internal investigation put the number of lost bitcoins at 744,408, Chief Executive Officer Mark Karpeles said in a sworn statement filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas on March 9.
“These events caused … MtGox to become insolvent,” Karpeles said in the statement.
The Tokyo-based exchange filed for bankruptcy in Japan last month after losing the bitcoins, valued around $473 million at the time. Mt. Gox filed a U.S. bankruptcy petition March 9 seeking to protect U.S. assets while it reorganizes in Japan.
Almost 750,000 customer bitcoins and 100,000 of the exchange’s, or about 7 percent of all bitcoins in existence worldwide, were missing and probably stolen, Mt. Gox said in the U.S. filing.
- Bloomberg New
sIBM says no client data shared with NSA
International Business Machines Corp. said it hasn’t disclosed client data to the U.S. government under a National Security Agency surveillance program and will challenge any order to do so.
The world’s largest computer-services provider said the government should deal directly with a client if it wants access to that client’s data, Robert Weber, IBM’s senior vice president for legal and regulatory affairs, wrote in a letter posted Friday on the company’s blog. If the U.S. government were to impose a gag order prohibiting IBM from notifying a client of such a request, IBM would challenge the order, including taking legal action, he wrote.
The U.S. has come under increased scrutiny for its surveillance at home and abroad using the spy agency’s collection of telephone and Internet metadata. Last year, documents leaked by former federal contractor Edward Snowden showed that technology companies were providing data at the request of government agencies, prompting questions about their roles in U.S. spying. Google Inc. and Apple Inc.
were among such companies that recently won permission to disclose aggregate numbers of orders under the agency’s so-called Prism program.
- Bloomberg News
Judge seals order on Pandora dispute
Pandora Media Inc.’s license rate for the repertory of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for 2011 to 2015 was decided Friday by a U.S. judge in New York who temporarily sealed the order to give the parties advance notice of her decision.
Pandora, the biggest Internet radio service, sued in 2012 asking the court to set “reasonable” fees for licensing with the songwriters and music publishers group. U.S.
District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan filed a notice of her decision and gave the parties until Tuesday to decide what portions of her ruling should be redacted before releasing it to the public.
Thomas Claps, a Susquehanna Financial Group LLP litigation analyst who has followed the Pandora case, said in a note that he expects a final decision, including the rate, to be issued Tuesday “or shortly thereafter.”
Lauren Iossa, a spokesman for the songwriters and publishers group, didn’t immediately respond to email and phone messages requesting comment on the ruling.
A Pandora spokesman, Will Valentine, didn’t immediately respond to an email request for comment on the ruling.
Pandora said in its suit that fees charged at the time made sustained profitability impossible under its agreement with the 470,000-member group. The group and Pandora reached an “experimental” fee accord in 2005 that lasted until 2010 and couldn’t agree on new rates in more than a year of talks, Pandora said in its complaint.
- Bloomberg News
Business, Pages 23 on 03/17/2014