Best Buy is dealing out of the gate on the new iPad, which goes on sale Friday. The retailer is offering a $25 gift card through Monday to customers who buy the $329 tablet, and it’s enticing customers further with a “minimum $150” Best Buy gift card for select working iPad trade-ins, the retailer's website said Wednesday. Eligible trade-ins are working Apple iPad mini 2, mini 3, mini 4, Air, Air 2 and iPad Pro models, it said.

The Association of National Advertisers said Amazon, Instagram, Twitter and other tech firms with “walled garden” digital ad platforms should allow the Media Rating Council to conduct independent audits of their ad metrics. Walled garden platforms are those in which the provider “has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applications or content,” ANA said in a Friday report. ANA surveyed 113 members, with 89 percent of respondents saying they approved of decisions last month by Facebook and Google's YouTube (here and here) to allow the MRC to do independent audits of their ad metrics.

With marketers increasingly fed up with different audience measurement standards used by different platforms, TV programmers Fox Networks Group, Turner and Viacom are looking to fill that gap and get ahead of the issue with the announced launch Wednesday of their OpenAp consortium, Syracuse University advertising associate professor Beth Egan said. Better audience targeting "doesn't need to be that complicated," Fox and others said, saying adoption of better audience targeting has been stymied by the lack of transparency and consistency in audience buying. They said the OpenAP standard audience targeting platform will open the door to more transparency in audience buying by being a standard for cross-publisher audience targeting and independent measurement. The OpenAP announcement didn't include some details, including who the independent auditor will be. Nielsen in a statement said it backs OpenAP efforts "to create a clearinghouse to audit the audience-based advertising delivery of its members" and to give audited and verified data on ad delivery. "This is an important part of what is needed to create openness and transparency in ad buying and selling," it said, saying its own ratings data will underpin the consortium data. OpenAP should make buying across different media owners easier, removing some friction, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said. He said it's significant that NBCUniversal isn't part of the consortium since it, along with Viacom and Turner, are among the major suppliers in the alternative ad data market. Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard in an address earlier this year at the Internet Advertising Bureau was critical of digital companies like Facebook and said more third-party auditing of and transparency around its ad data is needed, Egan noted. That may have influenced the timing of the OpenAP announcement, Egan said. In their announcement, Fox and the other programmers said OpenAP will bring "consistently designed audience targets [that] can be activated across any OpenAP member publisher" as well as independent measurement and an open platform backing industry-standard data and measurements.

Sony’s New York showcase store, Sony Square, launched a new exhibit that highlights the “evolution of design” in Sony products over the years, Sony America said in a Wednesday announcement. Visitors to the store “will have the opportunity to touch, feel and play with” more than 30 products being showcased in the exhibit, including the original 1979 Walkman cassette player, alongside Sony’s newest Walkman model, the NW-WM1Z with hi-res audio, it said. Also on display there is Sony’s first consumer Mavica camera and working models of the PlayStation, PS2 and PS3 videogame consoles, it said. The exhibit was created to appeal “to both technophiles and those interested in design,” said Steven Fuld, Sony America senior vice president-corporate marketing, in a statement.

Advertising trade groups lauded Capitol Hill Republicans for introducing Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval in both chambers to kill FCC ISP privacy rules (see 1703080062). The CRA "was designed as a common-sense check on anti-consumer regulations like this,” said a joint statement Monday from the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Network Advertising Initiative. “We strongly urge Congress to support and quickly act on these Joint Resolutions.” Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester disagreed and said the support “will backfire on the industry, as they help support what is ultimately a digital data surveillance system that erodes the democratic freedoms we all must preserve.” The associations are “placing very short-term profits before the needs of our country,” he said.

Retailers hopped on the March Madness train Monday, hoping to accelerate inventory clear-outs before 2017 TVs ship, we found in a scan of e-commerce sites Monday. Abt Electronics was selling Samsung’s 2016 UN65KS8000 65-inch 4K Ultra HD TV at a cart-price of $1,599, below manufacturer’s minimum advertised price, compared with competitors B&H Photo ($1,697), Sam’s Club ($1,699) and Jet.com ($1,697). Best Buy’s “Bracket Busting Savings” included the LG 55UH7700, a 55-inch 4K TV with high dynamic range and webOS 3.0, selling for $300 off to $799. At Target, “Mad” TV deals included a 60-inch Vizio 1080p HDTV, marked down $150 to $599, with a $50 gift card tossed in and an extra $25 gift card for customers who use order pickup in a store; and the LG 65-inch 4K 65UH6030, cart-priced at $899, down from $979, also with the $25 store-pickup gift card.

Customers who trade in a qualifying smartphone and sign up for a T-Mobile One service contract with their existing number can get an iPhone 7 free, or an iPhone 7 Plus for $100, in a promotion that runs through March 16, said the carrier Friday. The deal is available to new and existing customers. Customers will get instant credit for trade-ins, and after registering online, will get a prepaid MasterCard in the mail with a rebate that can be applied to their remaining equipment installment plan balance, T-Mobile said.

More than 60 percent of small- and medium-sized businesses that spend $25,000 or more annually on advertising and marketing expect to increase such spending this year and possibly go into more digital platforms, said BIA/Kelsey in a Monday news release. Celine Matthiessen, vice president-analysis and insights, said the businesses "are benefiting from the lower costs of digital media and the opportunity to do more of the implementation themselves." She said the firms are reinvesting their savings into ad and marketing plans, potentially expanding into mobile and social digital services, along with traditional media advertising. BIA/Kelsey said the top advertising platforms used by the businesses are direct mail, internet yellow pages, Facebook, website video, community sponsorships, email, giveaways, cable and magazines.

U.S. Sprint customers ages 18 and older are eligible to win one of 20 Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge smartphones, or the top prize of 100,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles to use toward a destination of their choice, in a sweepstakes that runs through March 10. Existing customers in good standing with service that began on or before Dec. 24 can enter daily and earn an extra entry per day by following @Sprint or @SprintLatino on Twitter, Sprint said.

Online should surpass TV as the largest U.S. ad spending category this year, S&P Global Ratings announced Thursday. S&P said overall U.S advertising spending will be up 1.7 percent this year, less than half the 3.9 percent gain of last year due to absence of political and Olympics ad spending. Excluding those events, core ad spending would be up 3 percent, and 2018 spending is expected to be up 3.1 percent due to the Winter Olympics and political spending in the non-presidential year. The firm said its ratings on the U.S. media and entertainment sector are trending negative due to ongoing shifts in media consumption and ad spending. S&P said online, outdoor and core TV sectors likely will have ad revenue growth, while newspapers, magazines and radio will have continued ad revenue declines.