“Creative teams have toiled hard all year to deliver break-through holiday campaigns and tap into consumers’ heightened intent to purchase. Sadly, the impact of their work is minimised by the last executional leg of the journey: adapting creative assets to align them to the digital media environments they’re intended for” said Anastasia Leng, founder and CEO of CreativeX.

“These small tweaks increase an ad’s Creative Quality Score and media effectiveness, and during a year of heightened budget scrutiny, it may just give marketing teams something to be joyful about”, she continued.

The analysis, which estimates more than 3.9 million ads from 2021-2022 from more than 400 brands across 10 different industries, including retail, food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods, found that brands spent more than $600 million globally on ads that are not digitally relevant during the critical time of year for marketers.

It predicts that more than $73 billion will be spent on digitally sub-optimal ads in the fourth quarter of 2023.

 

A previous study conducted by CreativeX found that in 2020 and 2021, more than 50% of digital ad spend will be invested in image and video ads that are not optimized for the digital environment ($700 million out of $1.2 million). A year later, almost as much budget was spent in the fourth quarter alone.

For many bros, the last quarter of the year represents more than 50% of their annual revenue and a disproportionate share of their annual media budget (approximately 30% of total global ad spend). This is a crucial opportunity for brands to attract consumers as purchase intent peaks during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas holidays.

Considerable sums are allocated to ads that lack branding in the crucial first three to five seconds—the average viewing duration of a digital video. Additionally, these ads are frequently formatted incorrectly and neglect essential features such as subtitles or supers. In an environment where over 90% of videos are watched without sound, these are basic creative quality criteria proven to enhance performance on digital platforms.

Sascha Deri is CEO at bluShift Aerospace. He is the man behind the “Starless Rogue” – the long-awaited suborbital sounding rocket powered by a groundbreaking non-toxic, carbon-neutral, bio-derived solid fuel, on which is also the movie devoted.

The company has worked with Knack Factory for the official trailer and it also designed a film poster for this occasion. In addition, Deri directs from a script by Knack Factory, based on real-life events and an ongoing, first-of-its-kind equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder, according to a post from the official bluShift’s Facebook profile.

The money raised in the Race To $1 Million will help with testing of MAREVL™ 2.0 and unlock $100,000 in non-dilutive funding from the Maine Technology Institute. After they pass $1 Million, Sascha will draw 5 winners at the monthly webinar.

The company’s goal is “to create an earth-friendly aerospace industry – with an Uber-like space launch service that carries small payloads for paying customers”.

The purpose of the broadening in Germany is to strengthen existing customer relations and also to promote OVES Enterprise services in the German-speaking markets from the DACH region. Mihai Filip, CEO of OVES Enterprise said:

“Currently, we have 20 clients outside Romania, 10 of them being in Germany. Hence the desire to set up an OVES Enterprise office in Munich. Also, 80% of last year’s turnover was generated by businesses from abroad, and with the international expansion we estimate that the share will be increased to 95%.”

The company has a team of consultants specializing in enterprise technologies such as Java, .net, Python, Big Data and Front End (Angular, React etc).

When it comes to the OVES Enterprise’s revenue – last year it has increased 4 times, reaching approximately 14 million lei.

Doubling the number of employees to support the company’s expansion on the international market and engaging in increasingly complex projects are part of the company’s development plans for this year.

That happens after the Bulgarian government came into possession of the significant treasure after Bulgarian law enforcement authorities seized the Bitcoins during an operation related to identifying cyber-crimes committed by an international group of hackers.

At present, there is no comprehensive regulatory framework governing the country’s growing FinTech sector and transactions using crypto currencies, such as buying, selling, and paying with Bitcoins, are not subject to licensing requirements.

 

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The truth is that we are dependent on technology, social media and everything which lives in the industry. Sometimes all these gadgets and applications are a complete waste of time but also, there are some inventions which made our life better. The question is – who are the coders who created those inventions?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

They met each other at Stanford University where they both studied computer science. Soon after graduation, they both started working on a search engine initially called Backrub. Their intention was to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” .

However, the search engine soon is being renamed and that’s how Google was born in 1998 and its first office was situated in a garage at Menlo Park, California. Its owner was Susan Wojcicki who was the 16th employee at the company and now a CEO of YouTube.

Now, Google is the most famous and usable search engine which is providing a lot of helpful tools and products to its users, making their work and life easier.

Mark Zuckerberg 

Probably when you hear this name you associate it with the most famous social media – Facebook. That’s because, as we all know, he is the creator of this platform. But have you ever asked yourself how Facebook was invented?

Well, Mark Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard University when he launched this social media in 2003, called “FaceMash” but a couple of months later it was renamed to “TheFacebook”. The change of the name was on 4th of February and actually this is the date when the platform was officially released.  Zuckerberg’s main goal was to create a website where people around the university could connect to each other easier. However, it turns out to be a social media platform, used by billions of people who enjoy all the features and options they are provided with.

Bill Gates

In 1975 Bill Gates, together with his friend Paul Allen, founded Microsoft which is a tech giant nowadays. In other words, this is the largest personal computer software company.

Actually, Bill Gates was a dropout of Harvard University where he studied as a pre-law student. However, he was more interested in computer science and he spent most of his time at the University’s computer center with the intention to improve his computing skills.

Now he is one of the richest men in the world and his company provides its users a colorful spectrum of products and features which are helpful for everyone using it. Microsoft is constantly working on its success and expanding and it seems that it has no intention to stop.

Margaret Heafield Hamilton

She was born in 1936 and she has contributed to NASA’s Apollo Program. Margaret had studied Mathematics and Philosophy at Earlham College in Richmond and it seemed that Mathematics played a crucial part in her life.

Margaret is one of the best female programmers and soon after moving to Boston with her husband – James Hamilton, she accepted a job at MIT where she started working on a software which was supposed to predict the weather.

Also, in the early 1960s she was working on a program which had to identify enemy aircraft. The intention behind this was to help the US air defense system.

Guido van Rossum

He is a Dutch computer programmer who is the creator of Python – one of the most famous programming languages. He named the language after a TV show called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. At first, he just wanted to find a hobby “project” to spend his weekend on but soon it turned out to be more than a project. Guido van Rossum worked for Google from 2005 to December 2012. Also, in 2013 he started working for Dropbox.

Rossum has received some awards and one of them is the Award for the Advancement of Free Software.

Personal investment from Shantanu Rastogi (General Atlantic) and Ajay Gupta’s (Capital Foods) family office AJAX Capital and Holy Basil Consultancy led the funding round.

The round also saw participation from Manish Choksi’s (vice chairman at Asian Paints) family office, Sunidhi Group’s family office, Sanjaya Gupta (former MD & CEO of PNBHFL), among others. The co-founder and COO Shubha Lal said:

“The fundraising is a testament to the confidence of our stakeholders in our value proposition- sharp focus on product management and redefining customer service standards at a reasonable price.”

The funds will help the company deepen its presence in a competitive crowded market, she added.

Your-Space has over 7,000 operational beds in 9 cities. It targets to have more than 20,000 beds by July this year for the coming 2022-23 academic year.

The company’s goal was to make the students’ world better while they toil hard to study away from their homes.

It focuses on security, comfort, community and health.

The company said, the student housing market size is projected to reach over $25 billion annually by 2025.

“From 2020 to 2021, the number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four to seven, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40 per cent.”

The report added:

“Once North Korea gained custody of the funds, they began a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out.”

A United Nations panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea has accused Pyongyang of using stolen funds to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes to circumvent sanctions.

North Korea does not respond to media inquiries. However, it has previously released statements denying allegations of hacking.

The United States charged three North Korean computer programmers working for the country’s intelligence service last year. The accused was connected to a massive, years-long hacking spree aimed at stealing more than $1.3 billion (€1.14 billion) in money and cryptocurrency. The hacker attack affected companies from banks to Hollywood movie studios.

Aleph said Twitter’s stake buy would help the company expand its educational tech platform. The company did not reveal any financial terms of the investment.

Aleph counts Meta Platforms Inc, Spotify Technology SA and Microsoft Corp-owned LinkedIn among its customers.

Brands have continued to advertise online, despite wide-ranging supply chain disruptions that delayed products from reaching shelves and a user privacy clampdown by Apple Inc

Aleph was valued at $2 billion last year after private equity firm CVC Capital Partners bought a stake worth $470 million.

Aleph had confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering in October.

The celebrities touted tokens sold by EthereumMax or EMAX. The idea was to boost its price and make a profit “at the expense of their followers and investors.”, claims the lawsuit, filed Jan. 7 in Los Angeles federal court. The lawsuit stated:

“The company’s executives, collaborating with several celebrity promoters … made false or misleading statements about EthereumMax through social media advertisements and other promotional activities.”

Kardashian promoted EthereumMax in a June 2021 post on Instagram,  when she had 250 million followers, according to the lawsuit.

“Are you guys into crypto?” she wrote in the post, followed by the disclaimer “this is not financial advice”, but that she wanted to share “what my friends just told me” about the EthereumMax tokens. She included the #AD hashtag to show the post was a paid advertisement, the lawsuit said.

Mayweather promoted EthereumMax on his boxing trunks during a widely viewed fight with YouTube star Logan Paul in June. There were also other times he did that.

Representatives for Kardashian and Mayweather did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

EthereumMax, the company, was also named in the lawsuit. In a statement  EthereumMax said:

“The deceptive narrative associated with the recent allegations is riddled with misinformation about the EthereumMax project. We dispute the allegations and look forward to the truth coming out.”

A New York resident who bought EMAX tokens and lost money filed the lawsuit. It is proposed as a class-action suit for anyone who bought EMAX tokens from mid-May to late June 2021. The case seeks restitution and disgorgement of profits by the defendants.

The rules would replace current interim legislation that allows the voluntary reporting of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) with a legal obligation to recognise, report and remove it.  EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper:

“I will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse.”

The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – Meta, would be particularly affected by any change in regulations, added Johansson. The company currently accounts for around 95 per cent of child sexual abuse notifications.

In 2020, internet service providers and social media platforms in the EU filed 22 million reports of child sexual abuse. This is thought to be just a fraction of the actual number of incidents.

According to a 2020 report by the Internet Watch Foundation, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands appear among the top ten countries hosting child sexual abuse URLs.  Of those, the Netherlands was by far the leader, playing host to over 117,000 CSAM web pages.