Today's Top Stories Twitter's $230 million mobile advertising deal with Omnicom is part of a trend among social media sites to beef up their mobile ad capabilities. As part of the deal, Omnicom will integrated its automated ad buying unit Accuen with Twitter's mobile ad exchange MoPub, which Twitter bought last year for $350 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal with lock in ad rates and inventory for Omnicom agencies and give Omnicom a "first look" at new ad units and opportunities being developed by Twitter, the newspaper reports, citing company sources. "This is the first holding company agreement we've done on the mobile ad exchange side. It's great for us because we'll now have high-quality advertisers coming through the exchange," Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue, tells The Journal. The Twitter-Omnicom deal follows Twitter's launch in April of a mobile app promotion suite for its MoPub exchange and native ads service that sells ads that blend into content on mobile devices, according to a report by Media Bistro's All Twitter. In addition, Facebook launched its mobile ad network Audience Network, which promises mobile advertisers the ability to "extend their campaigns beyond Facebook and into other mobile apps," FierceMobileIT reported last month. Commenting on Facebook's move, Eric Gross, senior vice president of mobile and display advertising at Matomy Media Group, writes in an Inside Mobile Apps column: "While it remains to be seen how beneficial Facebook's Audience Network will be for app developers' monetization efforts, two of Facebook's other recent ad-targeting tools--Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences--have proven to be useful for improving the performance of mobile app install ads." "Facebook has long been a friendly venue for mobile app publishers seeking new users. Now, with its new mobile ad network and more advanced ad targeting and performance solutions, it offers several methods for achieving higher performance from mobile app install ad campaigns," Gross adds. For Facebook at least, its mobile ad strategy is working. The social networking giant saw 59 percent of its overall ad revenue come from mobile in the 2014 first quarter, representing a 30 percent increase from the first quarter of 2013. For more:
- read The Wall Street Journal article
- check out the All Twitter report
- see Gross's column Related Articles:
Facebook thanks mobile for ad revenue boost while Google struggles
Report: Facebook ramps up mobile ad network
Marketers make 'long overdue' mobile investments Read more about: Facebook
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 The Facebook team has updated its mobile app with a function that allows it to listen in on background noise, pinpoint media--including TV shows, movies and music--and then include that media in a status update. The info will be included as a subset of the popular "feelings and activities" section of statuses, 5 billion of which were posted in the last year, according to Facebook. The company says that the new feature will make conversations "quicker and easier," and is just one more indication of the social network's newfound devotion to mobility. To avoid getting too Big Brother-y, Facebook made the function optional, and it can be disabled in the app's options.
 Looking to become a more ubiquitous name in the mobile customer relationship management, or CRM, industry, salesforce.com released last week an update to its mobile CRM app that included 30 new features focused on creating a single environment for customers to complete their tasks. According to InfoWorld, the added features include the ability to directly access reports and dashboards and allows for offline data access, which will let salespeople work even when they have no Internet connection. Furthermore, salesforce.com more closely linked their cloud services and app, which will allow marketers to entry to client data.
 The characteristics of a solid Stache are sleek, well-groomed and a personal collection of all your interesting and inspiring online content. If that last one doesn't make much sense, then check out the new app from d3i. The company's foray into personal bookmarking lets users connect to their various iOS accounts and bring their bookmarks anywhere with their iPhones, iPads or Macs. Hoping to cut down on the "endless lists of unorganized messy page titles" that comes with default bookmark features, the app provides a scrollable list of screenshots for a more illustrative experience.
 More than six million pounds of food are thrown away in New York City every day. Pareup is looking to help change that. By creating an app and an accompanying online marketplace, the new company hopes to curb waste and create a more efficient means of transferring food that retailers may not want, but restaurants, nonprofits and other organizations would gladly take for cheap. And since 30 percent of all food in the United States ultimately goes to waste, the company has plans outside of the Big Apple.
 Neel Sus, a resident of the Greater New Orleans Area, realized there was a dilemma for otherwise well-meaning folks met on the streets by panhandlers: will the money I give actually be used for food? So he created an app that guaranteed it would be. Carebacks allows donors to give a dollar amount to a participating store, and then provides the user with a pin number to give to the person in need. That person can then go to the store and redeem the voucher for only verified items, which means no tobacco, alcohol or any other vices.
Read more about: Salesforce, Stache
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Drivers who refuse to include telematics tracking devices in their vehicles could face higher insurance rates, predicts insurance execs. Both commercial and consumer vehicles are including more telematics equipment as part of an effort to improve fleet efficiency and provide services to consumers. But the ability to track vehicles wherever they go is raising privacy concerns as well as employee opposition. The biggest impact of increased use of tracking devices in consumer vehicles is likely to be in the provision of auto insurance. "In 10 years' time there will still be customers who prefer not to have a telematics device installed, [but] it will be an opt-out situation, rather than an opt-in. There will be reasons for people opting out--perhaps because they are bad drivers, or unhappy with the privacy element, or have an old car. But they will have to accept a higher premium to insure their car," observes Tom Ellis with insurance website Gocompare, who was quoted by The Telegraph as saying at a recent British Insurance Brokers' Association seminar. While the price of professionally installing tracking units in vehicles is high, insurers are increasingly providing self-install devices and smartphone apps that are much cheaper, the newspaper notes. Boston Consulting Group's Ofir Eyal predicts that half of cars will be equipped with telematics technology by 2020. Juniper Research forecasts that global revenues for telematics systems will reach $20 billion by 2018, spurred by what the market research firm calls "soft revenues"--such as car servicing, big data enabled by telematics and enhanced customer services that will enable manufacturers to generate revenues throughout the lifetime of the vehicle. At the same time, soft revenues will constitute a "major untapped revenue source" for consumer vehicles, judges Juniper. Split billing for telematics systems will be an important source of soft revenue. "The ability to split the telematics bill, pioneered by major operators and systems integrators, will have a positive impact on the telematics market. Granular billing for infotainment and other services will lead to new business models," says Juniper analyst and report author Anthony Cox. In addition, launch of services like Apple's in-vehicle CarPlay will accelerate app integration into the vehicle through smartphone-tethering and direct integration into the head unit. Cox expects in-vehicle apps to become widespread in the next five years, with most apps being available free of charge. For more:
- check out The Telegraph article
- see Juniper's release Related Articles:
Fleetmatics leverages mobility with new cloud-based field worker platform
More than 40% of European vehicles will employ V2X communications by 2030
Transportation firms adopt mobile apps to reduce cost, increase productivity Read more about: infotainment
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I came across an interesting 
Tablet Competition Heats Up: Samsung, Apple Vie for Top Spot -- THE Journal 
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