Apple featured prominently in a two-day Best Buy sale that began Friday. Among the deals were $250 off an iPad Pro, $150 off the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus with monthly installment plans and $550 off the price of an iMac. A 15-inch 2-in-1 HP laptop with Intel Core i3 processor, 8 GB RAM and 1 TB hard drive dropped by $100 to $499. In TVs, a 60-inch LG 4K LED TV fell $200 to $699, a Sharp 32-inch 720p HDTV lost $30 to $169 and a Samsung curved 55-inch 4K TV was cart-priced below the manufacturer’s minimum advertised price at $749, down from $899.

Gracenote linked with Connekt and Ensequence to bring interactive capability to linear TV advertisements and other programming, it said in a Tuesday announcement. Gracenote’s Video Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, used in 25 million smart TVs across eight brands globally, will enable marketers to deliver promotions, discount codes and custom offers tied to products and services, it said. The technology identifies ads in real-time using frame-by-frame image recognition, and when an ad is identified, Connekt and Ensequence can instantaneously deliver a graphical overlay corresponding to the ad. It gave as an example the ability for a carmaker to add an overlay that presents local dealer addresses, localized incentives or discounts for car service. Brands also can dynamically tie in social media elements, sponsorships or couponing. The technologies create “limitless” opportunities for TV advertising, said Kelly Abcarian, Nielsen senior vice president-product leadership. Gracenote’s technology can recognize any live, on-demand or prerecorded content and advertising that appears on TV “and trigger interactive overlays that harness the full potential of connected televisions,” she said. Gracenote didn't respond to questions on privacy and whether consumers have to opt in, or can opt out of, the feature.

The FTC scheduled a Twitter chat Wednesday on disclosures that social media influencers must make if they get money from or have some other material relationships with a brand or product they plug, said a notice. The 3:30 p.m. EDT chat will use the hashtag #Influencers101. The FTC noted it recently settled with two such influencers who "deceptively" endorsed the online gambling service CSGO Lotto while failing to inform their followers they jointly own the company. In April, the agency sent out more than 90 letters to influencers and marketers, reminding them they should disclose any relationships to brands when endorsing products on social media sites (see 1704190031).

Six advertising trade associations are "deeply concerned" about Apple's plans to release the Safari 11 browser update because it "overrides and replaces existing user-controlled cookie preferences" with the company's own "opaque and arbitrary standards for cookie handling," said a Thursday open letter. Signers are the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Network Advertising Alliance. "Safari's new 'Intelligent Tracking Prevention' would change the rules by which cookies are set and recognized by browsers," said the coalition, adding the move would create "haphazard rules over the use of first-party cookies (i.e. those set by a domain the user has chosen to visit) that block their functionality or purge them from users' browsers without notice or choice." The coalition contends blocking cookies this way will make ads "more generic and less timely and useful" and wants Apple to rethink its plan. The company didn't comment.

TCL extended its marketing partnership with The Ellen DeGeneres Show to a fourth season, it announced Monday. The collaboration includes giveaways of TCL Roku TVs to audience members, along with promotions and activations across digital and social media channels, said the company.

The Online Trust Alliance said additional improvements are needed in an anti-spam law, in comments to the FTC, which is seeking input on the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (Can-Spam) Act by Thursday (see 1706220013). OTA, an Internet Society initiative, said the law and business self-regulation have slowed spam growth and recommended changes without imposing extra costs for organizations. They include providing additional examples about the placement, color, size and terminology of the opt-out option; enabling consumers to opt out of multiple mail streams through one request; specifying the "from" line in an email since email headers or mass email services have many "from" addresses; clarifying new types of "informational" messages like alerts about news, product updates and site activity; and giving opt-out lists a "lifetime e.g., 5 years), after which the names must be purged from the system" but not subject to enforcement unless a customer relationship is restarted. OTA Director Jeff Wilbur said in a news release its recent audit found 94 percent of top retailers honored an unsubscribe request within three business days. Companies including Act-On Software, American Greetings, LashBack, Optizmo, PeopleConnect, PostUp, ValiMail and Yes Lifecycle Marketing contributed to OTA's comments. Nearly 80 people, including University of California, Berkeley School of Law adjunct law professor and FTC expert Chris Hoofnagle, have filed comments in Project No. R711010. Hoofnagle said there's a continuing need for the Can-Spam rule and the technical interventions can reduce spam.

Facebook Pages that "repeatedly share stories marked as false" by third-party fact-checking organizations won't be allowed to advertise on the site, blogged product managers Satwik Shukla and Tessa Lyons Monday. They said they've found instances on Pages where ads were used to build audiences and spread fake news. If the Pages stop sharing such news, they would be allowed to run ads again. The product managers said the update will "disrupt the economic incentives and curb the spread of false news." Facebook and other companies have taken actions over the last year to fight fabricated stories (see 1705090037, 1704120004, 1703200052 and 1701040025).

Best Buy’s 50-hour anniversary sale was to have kicked off Friday at 10 p.m. (CDT), a follow-on to a similar event last year (see 1608180034) to ring in its 50th birthday. The Apple-heavy sale was to end Sunday at 11:59 p.m. CDT. The event is tied to back-to-school, and the retailer cited estimates of a $12.8 billion season spending on electronics. Highlights of the sale include up to $500 on select MacBooks; up to $300 on iPhone 7 and 7 Plus; $120 on the iPad mini 4; $500 on select iMacs; $200 on Beats Studio wireless headphones; $70 on Samsung’s Gear S3 Tumi smartwatch; $600 on LG 4K TVs, $350 on gaming PCs and monitors; and $300 on select Windows PCs, it said in a blog post. Eligible customers can also sign up for student deals. Among the TV deals, an LG 65UJ6300 65-inch LED smart TV was cart-priced $300 below the minimum advertised price to $999, and a Samsung 65-inch UN65MU6300FXZA 4K smart TV was cart-priced at $1,193, a $106 discount. Sony’s KDL48W650D 48-inch HDTV dropped by $50 to $429, also below minimum advertised price.

Consumers who trade in one of 40 models of working DSLR or mirrorless cameras from Canon, Leica, Nikon and Sony can qualify for $500 cash bonuses redeemable toward purchases of several new models of Sony full-frame cameras. The Sony promotion runs through Sept. 30. The cash bonus will be paid in addition to the trade-in value of any of the eligible cameras, as long as they're in working condition, Sony said. It also is offering 24-month interest-free financing at participating retailers on select Sony imaging products for a “limited time,” it said.

Facebook is strengthening efforts to ban "cloaking" that bypasses the company's review processes to show content in violation of community standards and advertising policies, blogged Product Management Director Rob Leathern and Software Engineer Bobbie Chang Wednesday. "Cloaked destination pages, which frequently include diet pills, pornography and muscle building scams, create negative and disruptive experiences." Cloakers create web pages with links that take Facebook reviewers to websites that comply with company policies, but users are taken to malicious or misleading sites. Leathern and Change said Facebook has taken down "thousands of these offenders" through artificial intelligence and expanded human reviews. They said the company will closely collaborate with industry and ban such advertisers and pages.