Ari Merkin, partner/executive creative director, and Anna Bologna, partner/president, have launched a new agency called Toy. The shop, located in New York, opens with the Oxygen Media account. Merkin was formerly executive creative director of Fallon, New York, while Bologna served as president of the office….Jan Leth, executive creative director of OgilvyInteractive, has been appointed chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather, where he will join co-chief creative officers David Apicella and Chris Wall in an effort to facilitate collaboration….Glenn Gray has joined Colle+McVoy, Minneapolis, as a group creative director….Tom Cordner, the worldwide creative director for the Ford account at JWT Detroit, will now be splitting his time between Los Angeles and Detroit….
Account Movement
Liberty Mutual has selected Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmpulous, Boston, to handle its ad account…..Attik, which has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, and Huddersfield, will handle ad duties for America Online’s AIM service….
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More
