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France's government says it has persuaded a leading Internet provider to stop blocking online advertisements — a controversial move that would have hit online search giants such as Google.

A new TV advert for a brand of electronic cigarettes marks the first time in decades cigarettes of any sort have been promoted on US television. Anti-smoking campaigners fear the rapid growth of tobacco-free cigarettes could undermine years of successful anti-smoking efforts.

LinkedIn is launching a new Ads API that will make it easier for social media marketers to manage their LinkedIn campaigns. That could mean future growth in the company's ad revenue.

The two-year-old drive to give consumers a simple way to block companies from tracking their behavior as they move across the Internet has faltered, say participants in the process who are struggling to reconcile privacy concerns with an advertising model that pays for many free Internet services.

Trying to bolster her media empire, Oprah Winfrey has been seeking to attract younger audiences to her magazine, which has experienced a decline in advertising revenue since her talk show ended.

In split-second auctions, companies are jockeying for the chance to buy online ads geared to your specific tastes. But consumer advocates see a risk of a computer-generated class system.

Technologies that target ads to specific consumers, rather than aggregate audiences offered by publishers, are punishing newspaper, broadcast and magazine sites.

A host of challenges confront Mark Thompson as he officially takes over as chief executive of New York Times Co, from making the company less dependent on advertising to trimming costs to figuring out what to do with its pile of cash.

Groupon and its compatriots in the much-hyped daily deals business were supposed to change the very nature of small-business advertising. Instead, it is the daily deal vendors that are racing to change as evidence mounts that their business model is fundamentally flawed.

Shares in AOL have jumped 14% after the US internet firm reported a sharp rise in advertising revenues. Advertising sales jumped 7% to $340m (£212m), boosting net profit for the third quarter to $20.8m, compared with a loss of $2.6m a year ago.