What you need to know in advertising today

Vimeo has removed Alex Jones’ InfoWars from its platform for violating the company’s Terms of Service standards, a Vimeo spokesperson told Business Insider on Sunday.

The videos, posted on Thursday and Friday “violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content,” the spokesperson said, adding that Vimeo had notified the account owner and issued a refund, as “we do not want to profit from content of this nature in any way.”

InfoWars became a hot-button topic internally at Vimeo last week, Business Insider has learned, with several employees at the company upset that the account was allowed to remain on the platform.

To read more about Vimeo removing InfoWars, click here.

In other news:

Meet the Snap exec leading product strategy, driving monetization, and debunking myths on augmented reality. Carolina Arguelles is Snap’s head of augmented reality (AR) Monetization and Product Strategy.

Facebook’s blockchain boss David Marcus is leaving cryptocurrency startup Coinbase’s board. His departure is a signal that the social networking giant’s secretive blockchain efforts are progressing.

Russian hackers attacked Swedish news sites in 2016 as part of an effort to spread misinformation about NATO, according to a newly released US State Department cable. The attack knocked several of the country’s biggest news organisations offline.

Chinese startup Bytedance is reportedly raising $3 billion in a round that would make it the most valuable startup in the world, according to the Wall Street Journal. The round would value Bytedance, which owns China’s biggest news aggregator, at $75 billion.

Spotify is considering allowing free users to skip ads. The feature is normally only available to paid users, but the company is running a test in Australia that allows them to skip ads they don’t like.

Activist investor Elliott Management has taken a big stake in Nielsen, the Wall Street Journal reported. The New York hedge fund has accumulated a stake of more than 8% in the TV-ratings company and is pushing it to sell. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How movie theaters are ruining your movie