Privacy regulators in the EU have asked Google to delay its plan to start compiling more detailed profiles of its users. Google indicated it would reject the request.

Yahoo and Microsoft Thursday announced a trio of updates to Microsoft's adCenter that included more refined targeting on mobile devices.

With all its amazing "hoopla" and extravagance, the Super Bowl is a great example of how informed marketers are grabbing the eyeballs that TV previously owned. A Harris Interactive survey found that 60% of mobile phone users plan to use and view their phone while watching the game.

With all its amazing "hoopla" and extravagance, the Super Bowl is a great example of how informed marketers are grabbing the eyeballs that TV previously owned. A Harris Interactive survey found that 60% of mobile phone users plan to use and view their phone while watching the game.

Clearspring ran sentiment analysis from its AddThis sharing platform showing the team that fans in each U.S. state favor, based on overall clicks, searches and shares. The New York Giants took more than 40 states; New England took the remainder. Clearspring tapped data related to search activity, social shares and clicks to analyze not only the favored football team of Super Bowl XLVI, but the favorite brands running ads during Sunday's game.

Continuing to position itself as more than an ad network, Undertone just signed exclusive agreements with 12 publishers, including American Media, AccuWeather, Bonnier Corporation, and Britannica.

In August, VivaKi's Nerve Center launched a new "lane" focused on tablets as part of its Pool initiative to develop new digital ad formats. Chief Curt Hecht, now based in Paris, who is leading Publicis Groupe's R&D center, sounds off on table efforts and mobile marketing.

Or tweet some yourself at Twitter hashtag #MPSuperAds Sunday before, during or after the kick-off of Super Bowl XLVI at 6:30 (ET) on NBC. MediaPost, in collaboration with TargetCast interactive chief Steve Minichini, will host a special tweet-up of impressions, reactions and predictions of industry pundits surrounding the Big Game, and the big ad campaigns that break during it. Or just sit back and watch the action unfold live on www.mediapost.com/publications.

AOL selected Yahoo's Right Media Exchange as the platform to provide real-time access to its inventory as part of the display advertising agreement that AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft entered into last fall.. The three companies agreed to pool each others' unsold inventory to boost ad pricing and enhance reach for advertisers and agencies.

Throughout 2011, CPG brands spent more than any other group on video advertising -- making up 24% of all dollars spent, according to new data from YuMe. Health and pharmaceutical brands came in second -- with a 16% share of the video ad market -- despite a 400% year-over-year increase in spending.

Horizon Media has named Ramond Romero vice president-digital media activation. He joins from Omnicom's OMD unit where he was group director-U.S. digital on the PepsiCo account.

By implanting electrodes directly into a part of participants' brains, scientists at UC Berkeley (where else) have found a way to reconstruct words someone hears based on their brain waves.

The battle between EMI's Capitol Records and "used" digital music store ReDigi has drawn the attention of Google, which this week attempted to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

Involver has created a near-real-time ad meter that will tally votes on Super Bowl XLVI ads from sites across the Internet. The Facebook platform has been built into the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, giving the social tool a facelift.

Budgets for advertising on Facebook continue to grow at a faster clip compared with paid search, according to Kenshoo Social. But are budgets growing faster because social appears as the shiny new object, or have marketers finally figured out how to calculate ROI from Facebook campaigns?

Former New York Times digital media reporter and columnist Virginia Heffernan has joined Yahoo as a national correspondent, covering culture and politics from “a digital perspective.” Yahoo says Heffernan will cover a range of topics from  how the 2012 presidential campaign plays out online to how social issues are shifting in a digital age.

The hiring is the latest move by the Web portal to gear up coverage for the 2012 election and its news operation more broadly. Last April Yahoo opened a Washington news bureau and in October the Internet giant announced an alliance with ABC News for joint national news coverage and programming.

With the movie premiere of "The Hunger Games" set for March 23, Hollywood is probably hoping the film version of the wildly popular young adult novel will also be a huge hit. So is Funtactix, the company behind the forthcoming social game based on the book, which is timed to launch on Facebook in tandem with the movie.

So much for The New York Times Co.'s phoenix-like return to digital prosperity. Due to declines in cost-per-click and display advertising at the About Group, total digital ad revenues decreased 4.9% to $95.7 million in the fourth quarter.

Thanks to the proliferation of Android-powered smartphones, however, the Google platform strengthened its position as the dominant mobile operating system overall on Jumptap's network, which reaches 95 million U.S. mobile users per month and 142 million worldwide.

Facebook Wednesday filed for an initial public offering to raise up to $5 billion in a deal that could ultimately value the social network at an estimated $75 billion to $100 billion. Though less than the $10 billion rumored, the transaction would be the largest IPO ever by an Internet company, easily eclipsing the $1.9 billion raised by Google in 2004.