Morning Bulletin: Kanye West goes flat pack, Google ‘ad injection’ warning & terror app breakthrough
This Friday morning The Drum carries a fresh batch of 10 stories to entertain, amuse and inform. These include an unlikely partnership between Kanye West and Ikea on a new range of flat pack furniture, a warning from Google about malicious ‘ad injections’ and a breakthrough by Israeli software engineers in cracking a messaging app used by terrorists.
Campaign relays a warning from Google that an ‘ad injection’ by commercial pay-per-install companies is infecting people’s web browsers and forcibly displaying unwanted adverts.
Retail Week leads with an unlikely mash-up between Kanye West and Ikea after the rapper revealed he would be interested in designing flat pack furniture for the Swedish DIY giant. In response Ikea have added a new bed to their range dubbed the Yeezy.
Over at AdWeek comes news that messaging app Kik has now facilitated some 2bn messages from users to branded chatbots. The findings will be music to the ears of marketers as they seek to engage with gen Z and Millennial audiences.
Ad Exchanger meanwhile zeroes in on internet radio platform Pandora which has launched a new range of visual ad products – somewhat counterintuitively as its highest engagement somewhat naturally stems from audio. Pandora has bigger ideas however and is keen to develop beyond a mere listening service.
Business Insider has Apple in its sights as it reveals a dramatic shift in Apple’s long-awaited TV game plan as it chooses to ditch its plans to create an app based experience and instead build an advanced TV guide that will serve to tie content services such as Netflix, HBO and ESPN together.
Reuters also chooses to focus on Apple with coverage of big cash rewards of up to $200k on offer from the technology giant to anyone who can identify critical security bugs in its software and products, enabling these vulnerabilities to be patched before criminals exploit them.
The Guardian meanwhile makes grim reading for Johnston press, which has seen its share price collapse to an all-time low on the back of a £148m pre-tax loss which wiped 40 per cent off its value at a stroke.
The Times picks up on a story from Israel where it is claimed a cyber-intelligence company has cracked a private messaging app used by so-called Islamic State to organise and plan attacks against the west. Intsights said that the encrypted Telegram channel is used by some 500 terrorists worldwide.
Back to Business Insider and the online title reports that Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has offloaded one million shares in his retail empire, earning himself a bumper $755m payday in the process.
Finally, Retail Week carries news that River Island has poached Nicholas Tahir, Tesco’s purchasing director, as it seeks to upscale its menswear division.