After growing at a neck-breaking speed, Groupon has become the recipient of attacks from all sides after its stumbling performance post-IPO. Among the points against Groupon are: slowing growth in its core daily-deals business, poor performance in Europe, accounting issues and questions about its leadership. “The trouble with Groupon’s core business is simple: for too […]

If you’ve become fed up with how Facebook has made things opaque and difficult for advertisers but couldn’t put your finger on the exact reasons why, this post from J.C. Kendall, CEO of TekPersona Corp., might help. “If you run a business, and you are looking to make money through driving people from Facebook to […]

On Thursday, comScore announced the U.S. beta release of Media Metrix Multi-Platform, an audience measurement and media planning tool that offers “unduplicated accounting of audience size and demographics that reflects today’s multi-platform digital media environment, which includes websites, apps and video content accessed from multiple devices.” The company notes that the biggest change from its […]

Google has acquired BufferBox, a Canada-based startup that offers a pickup-locker service similar to Amazon Locker. BufferBox offers green pickup lockers that serve as shipping addresses for its users. Once someone signs up for the service, they’ll get a PIN in the mail, which can be used to open a locker where they’ll pick up […]

A survey from STRATA, a media buying and selling software provider, finds that 91.9 percent of marketers surveyed were using social media in the third quarter of 2012, meaning just 8.1 percent were holding out. The percentage of marketers not utilizing social media was 8.5 percent in the second quarter and 10.3 percent in the […]

Now that we know Andrew Mason will stay on as the company’s CEO, let’s move on to other Groupon news: The daily-deals company reports that its Black Friday was the busiest day on record. According to Groupon, it saw nearly twice the purchase rate of its previous busiest day. Transactions via mobile surged 140 percent […]

Real-time bidding (RTB) is proving to be quite beneficial for mobile ads, according to Adfonic’s “Global AdMetrics Report” for the third quarter of 2012. The social networking channel in particular experienced significantly higher click-through rates (CTRs) thanks to RTB. Adfonic’s report also found that not all mobile ad formats are created equal. RTB grows in […]

Socially Aware Blog put together an infographic offering an overview of how Americans are spending their time with social networking sites. Here are some of the interesting findings: Visitors spend an average of 6.75 hours on Facebook per month; they spend an average of 1.5 hours on Tumblr, 1.5 hours on Pinterest, 21 minutes on […]

By Jonathan L. Pompan, of counsel, Venable LLP

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) have targeted mortgage advertising and marketing in a joint “sweep.” Just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the CFPB and FTC announced they issued warning letters to mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers advising them to “clean up potentially misleading advertisements, particularly those targeted toward veterans and older Americans.”

After all the hoopla and speculation, Groupon will keep Andrew Mason as its CEO. Reports earlier this week indicated that the daily-deals company’s board was going to consider giving Mason the boot during Thursday’s meeting. The price of Groupon’s shares went up on those reports