Morning Bulletin: Sony pushes for mobile gaming, Fox News facing hacking claims and Apple iPhone 7 rumours
The Drum kicks off the week with a roundup of the top marketing stories to break over the weekend, including Sony’s push into mobile gaming, hacking allegations aimed at the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlet Fox News and Hillary Clinton’s use of a start-up encryption app.
Morning Bulletin: Sony pushes for mobile gaming, Fox News facing hacking claims and Apple iPhone 7 rumours.
To kick things off this morning, Music Business Worldwide reports that Soundcloud has appointed Holly Lim as its first chief financial officer. The hire comes amid doubts from some observers over the future of the business and Lim faces a challenge in securing its financial health. The Berlin-based service lost €39.14m in 2014 on revenues of just €17.35m, and that was without any major royalty payments to rights-holders.
The Financial Times reports that Sony is readying an ‘aggressive’ push into mobile gaming. Hot on the heels of Pokemon Go’s runaway success, the Japanese technology giant admits that it can no longer ignore the mobile space following years of almost of viewing consoles at the only necessary gaming platform. While the business has a mobile strategy, to date it’s more been about using them to sell more Playstations than it has been about making money from apps and other services.
At the Guardian, news circulates that Rupert Murdoch is set for a bout of déjà vu as another of his title’s – Fox News – faces accusations of phone hacking. Media watchdog group Media Matters has called for an investigation into the right-wing news network after allegations it hired a private investigator to obtain the phone records of one ifs reporters, Joe Strupp.
Adexchanger caught up with Dentsu Aegis chief executive Jerry Buhlmann recently, who explained the rationale behind the holding group’s acquisition of a programmatic business last week, it’s second major ad tech buy in less than a month. He is of the opinion that “everything will become programmatic” eventually, envisioning his business of approaching that goal by 2020.
Back at the Financial Times, it is reported that the Democrats’ presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is using a start-up’s app that guarantees secure messaging. Clinton’s campaign team are using Signal, am encryption app created by Open Whisper Systems after it was revealed that the Democratic national Comitte had been hacked by a Russian group.
Ahead of the Apple event later this week (7 September), rumours about the expected iPhone that’s set to debut are spreading. The Verge reports one such rumour from KGI Securities’ analyst Ming-chi Kuo, who has good form with previous predictions about the technology giant. If you don’t mind spoilers, head over to the site here to see what’s in store.
Marketing Week explores the issues behind one of the last week’s top stories, which saw McDonald’s reveal it would pay new agency Omincom by results. The report goes on to explore the inherent trust issues at the heart of such an arrangement, with Mumsnet and Oystercatchers among those to share their thoughts on the subject.
HSBC is following in the footsteps of Airbnb and is letting business customers verify their identities when they open an account by taking a selfie. Business Insider reports that the bank is using facial tracking technology to “streamline the account opening experience”, with the selfie being validated against another form of identification that has previously been submitted, such as a passport.