Morning Bulletin: Channel 4 horror show, Amazon’s ‘secret’ drone testing ground & NYT hack
This morning’s bulletin includes an unfortunate error at Channel 4 exposing children to a grisly preview of the Walking Dead, the apparent discovery of Amazon’s secret UK drone testing ground and an investigation into the believed targeting of the NYT by Russian hackers.
AdWeek focusses on one artist's cross-country adventures after Samsung sponsored illustrator Timothy Goodman to take its Galaxy Note 7 device on a road trip to record local sights and social media for an interactive art project.
Channel 4 has had its knuckles rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for airing a horror trailer for Fear the Walking Dead during children’s animation Rango, according to Campaign the broadcaster blamed the lapse on an ‘administrative error’.
Facebook is apparently testing a new breed of auto play video ads with the sound defaulted to on according to Ad Age, as the social network presses ahead with a form of advertising hated by 80 per cent of web goers.
Ad Exchanger drills down into Wishbone, the teen polling app, the latest in a series of profiles. The mobile app claims to marry advertising and content in a reaction against the oft-misused phrase ‘native advertising’.
Elon Musk is commanding headlines once more this time with the launch of a ‘milestone’ battery pack which the Tesla founder claims will lead to a longer range and faster acceleration for its latest electric vehicles.
Britain’s battered press face a fresh onslaught from Facebook and other platforms in the immediate future through to 2026, according to a report in the guardian which warns of a cumulative £450m hit to the news industry as younger people turn to social media to stay abreast of current affairs.
Retail Week picks up on a ‘strong’ performance at stationer WHSmith which has announced it is on-track to meet its full year profit expectations courtesy of an uptick in its travel business in airports and railway stations.
Reuters reports on a tussle for the top between technology giants Tencent and Samsung to become the most valuable company in Asia as both companies report record earnings. Tencent is currently valued at $249bn whilst Samsung is worth $239bn.
Business Insider claims to have unearthed Amazon’s ‘secret’ drone testing site hidden deep in the English countryside. The innocuous looking field near Amazon’s Cambridge R&D hub serves as the etailers’s largest outdoor testing ground but has, until now, remained hidden.
Russian hackers are in the spotlight once again with the guardian reporting that the FBI have opened an investigation into whether the New York Times has fallen victim to a state sponsored attack, in a similar vein to an ongoing investigation into the source of leaks of embarrassing emails from the Democratic National Committee.