What you need to know in advertising today

Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens while testifying before a joint
Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees hearing regarding the
company’s use and protection of user data, on Capitol Hill in
Washington, U.S., April 10, 2018.
REUTERS/Leah Milli

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

With its News Feed nearly saturated and advertising growth rates
slowing down, Facebook knows it must look elsewhere to maximize
profits.

That place increasingly appears to be Stories — the section that
houses ephemeral photos and videos for 24 hours before they
disappear.

Even with Stories already hot
on Facebook’s sister platform Instagram, however, the
format is yet to take off on Facebook. So it won’t be an easy
sell.

To read more about why it’ll be hard for Facebook to sell
Facebook Stories,
click here.

In other news:

The BBC is reinventing its on-demand service iPlayer to compete
with Netflix. The BBC has been adding more box sets
and archive footage, and has scrapped the 30-day limit on them.

Google Assistant beat Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa in a
head-to-head intelligence test. In a test run
by Loup Ventures on smartphones, Google Assistant was able to
answer the most questions correctly.

Speaking of Google, meet the company’s 14 ‘unsung
rockstars’ that insiders say are about to blow up.
Business Insider spoke to Google insiders, partners and rivals to
get a sense of the most buzzed about names within the
80,000-person tech giant.

MoviePass experienced ‘technical’ difficulties again, days after
it ran out of money and had to borrow $5 million in
cash. Many users complained Saturday evening
that there were issues with checking in on the app and purchasing
a ticket on their MoviePass card.

Some Facebook advertisers say that that the platform’s
decision to shut down third-party data targeting will have a
significant impact on them, reports the Wall Street
Journal. Advertisers in Europe are on the front
lines of Facebook’s efforts to tighten privacy practices and
their frustrations help explain why the social-media giant’s
troubles are far from over.

The CBS board is scheduled to meet via conference on Monday
to discuss whether Les Moonves should step aside while the
company investigates allegations outlined against him, the Wall
Street Journal reports. Ronan Farrow
published a story with six women accusing the CEO of
harassment and intimidation in the New Yorker on Friday.