Facebook and Twitter are the newest members of CTA, the trade group said in a Thursday announcement.

Technology will again play a major role in the upcoming holiday season, but it won’t be just products that consumers buy driving end-of-year sales, said a National Retail Federation report. While the expected TVs, PCs and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets are primed to be top sellers come November, wearables and video streaming also will be factors on the gift side, and buy buttons and mobile payments will influence the way consumers make purchases, NRF said. It cited a Synchrony Financial report from early this year saying eight of the top 10 retail trends for 2016 involve technology. Topics to keep an eye on, said NRF: (1) how social media and in-store shopping experiences blend, (2) how retail takes advantage of location-based strategies, (3) whether augmented reality and VR play a role, (4) if messaging services and bots “become the new apps,” (5) how online marketplaces will change the landscape, (6) the impact of payment options on the bottom line, (7) whether Singles Day (Nov. 11) gains traction with early-bird shoppers in the U.S. and (8) how two additional shopping days will affect holiday season sales compared with 2015.

Symantec introduced cybersecurity protection for connected cars, the company announced. Called Anomaly Detection for Automotive, the product protects against “zero-day attacks” and other security vulnerabilities unique to the connected car. Zero-day attacks are so named because a defender against those attacks has zero days to come up with a fix once a security flaw becomes widely exploited. “Connected cars offer drivers conveniences such as navigation, remote roadside assistance and mobile internet hot spots,” Symantec said Wednesday, citing Gartner forecasts of 220 million connected cars on the road globally in 2020. Though new connected-car technologies “promise to enhance the driving experience, these advancements also create avenues of attack for hackers that can endanger drivers and passengers,” Symantec said. Its product uses machine learning to provide “passive in-vehicle security analytics” that monitor all “controller area network” bus traffic without disrupting normal vehicle operations, the company said. Since the product learns “what normal behavior is,” it’s able to “flag anomalous activity that may indicate an attack,” it said: “The solution works with virtually any automotive make and model.”

Global advertising agencies Interpublic and Omnicom and companies Bayer, GoDaddy and Google said they will take aggressive steps to stop ads from appearing on pirated websites, the Trustworthy Accountability Group said in a Thursday news release. The 2-year-old TAG, formed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau in part to combat digital ad piracy and copyright infringement, said $2.4 billion in revenue is lost to pirated sites annually. By committing to Tag's pledge, the companies -- joining dozens more ad agencies and advertisers now in the initiative -- must take "commercially reasonable steps to minimize the inadvertent placement of digital advertising on websites or other media properties,” the group said. This means they must hire a TAG-validated company that offers anti-piracy services, use TAG-certified ad placement services or conduct business with ad agencies that carry the TAG “Certified Against Piracy” seal. Eleven companies have "earned" that seal, "which signals to the industry that their anti-piracy services meet stringent requirements of keeping ads off of sites that contain illicit content," said TAG.

U.S. internet ad revenue saw a record Q1, hitting $15.9 billion, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said in a news release Thursday. The previous first-quarter record, $13.2 billion, was set last year, said the IAB report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The 21 percent year-over-year jump is the biggest in four years, it said. The report included revenue data from websites, commercial online services, free email providers and other online ad sellers. “These landmark revenues confirm the growing importance of interactive for brand marketers to reach consumers who are increasingly spending their time on digital screens,” said IAB Chief Marketing Officer David Doty. “Last year the industry reached its highest level of investment at over $50 billion, and this first quarter lays the foundation for what could very well be the biggest year yet for digital ad spending.”

Electronic health record company Practice Fusion settled FTC charges that it misled consumers into providing doctor reviews without telling them such feedback would be publicly posted on the internet, disclosing sensitive personal and medical information, the commission said in news release Wednesday. The commission voted 3-0 to issue an administrative complaint and accept the consent agreement, which will be published soon in the Federal Register and be open for public comment through July 8. “Companies that collect personal health information must be clear about how they will use it -- especially before posting such information publicly on the Internet," said FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich in a statement. The settlement will require the cloud-based EHR company to get a patient's "affirmative consent" and "clearly and conspicuously disclose" that such information would be publicly available, the release said. The agreement also bars the company from making deceptive privacy or confidentiality statements about collected patient data. FTC said Practice Fusion sought to launch a public healthcare provider directory in 2013 and, during the prior year, solicited feedback through a "satisfaction survey" from patients of providers using the company's EHR service. Patients believed such feedback would be shared only with their providers and many included personal data, such as their full name, phone number and medical inquiries, the release said. For example, one patient asked about a Xanax prescription and dosage, while another inquiry related to the mental state of the consumer's daughter and provided a phone number, the complaint said. Practice Fusion said in a blog post Wednesday the consent agreement "does not represent an admission of wrongdoing," doesn't impose monetary damages nor allege its current actions are "problematic."

More than 90 percent of companies will be using IoT technologies within two years, said a TIA Survey Wednesday. Some 48 percent of U.S. businesses are using IoT solutions today, and another 43 percent expect to deploy them within 24 months, it said. IoT will become a mainstream part of business by 2019, said TIA, and survey findings show that companies expect 44 percent of IT budgets in 2020 to be dedicated to IoT development and maintenance. A key theme in survey findings: companies have accepted the value of data to their business, with 72 percent planning to use IoT to capture data on product feature usage, said the survey.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to grant Google's petition for a writ of certiorari seeking a review of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2015 decision that allowed to proceed a class-action lawsuit by California advertisers who used Google's AdWords ad placement service. The advertisers, who used AdWords between 2004 and 2008, are seeking refunds from Google because they believe the company misled them by placing their ads on parked domain names and other undesirable pages along with desired placements next to relevant Google search pages. The 9th Circuit reversed a 2012 San Jose U.S. District Court ruling that denied the advertisers class-action status, saying the advertisers were all seeking restitution based on the same type of claimed deception. The Supreme Court denied certiorari without comment. Google didn't comment.

The FTC said it filed charges against Florida-based companies Tachht and Teqqi, and owners Colby Fox and Christopher Reinhold, claiming the companies illegally spammed consumers with emails that pitched “bogus” weight-loss products by falsely claiming endorsements by Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities. The FTC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in Tampa alleging violations of FTC Act sections 5 and 12, along with the 2003 Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act. Tachht and Teqqi sent the emails via hacked email accounts so it would appear to be sent by the consumer's family members, friends and other contacts, the FTC said. Links in the emails promoted “unproven” weight-loss products like Original Pure Forskolin and Original White Kidney Bean, the FTC said. “These defendants used a variety of deceptive tactics to sell their bogus diet pills, said FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich in a Monday news release. Tachht and Teqqi didn't comment.

Digital matching firms like Uber provide potential benefits to consumers, workers and the economy, said a Commerce Department issue brief released Friday. The report by the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) defines digital matching firms as “entities that provide online platforms (or marketplaces) that enable the matching of service providers with customers,” with Uber and Airbnb as examples. The firms typically rely on user-based rating systems for quality control, and provide flexible hours to workers, who bring their own tools to the job, the report said. “Relatively little economic research on digital matching firms exists, and teasing out data about the size and value of these firms is difficult.” But studies by the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers, MBO Partners and others “suggest that digital matching firms are quickly growing in size, yet remain a relatively small part of the greater U.S. economy,” it said. Potential benefits of the firms include: (1) lower prices for consumers from reduced transaction and overhead costs; (2) flexible employment schedules and extra income for workers; (3) the ability to take advantage of underutilized assets, such as houses that are vacant most of the year; (4) greater economic consumption; (5) an enhanced consumer experience; and (6) increased trust between consumers and individual service providers. Possible downsides include: (1) potential income instability since demand and service prices may vary; (2) fewer job benefits and protections that might come with traditional employment; (3) no training for service providers because they’re not technically employees; (4) a requirement that workers buy and maintain their own assets, such as a car for Uber; (5) consumer privacy and security are in firms’ hands; and (6) Internet and smartphone access is usually required. The report noted it may take time to determine how to fit digital matching firms into the regulatory framework, with many unsettled issues including worker classification, taxation and compliance, accessibility for people with disabilities, and consumer safety and service provider certification.