The latest IPA Bellwether reported a net balance of 4.5% of firms upwardly revising their media budgets in Q1, driven by growth in online and video advertising.

A look back at the biggest themes that have emerged in UK media during what has at times been a predictably chaotic Q1.

Cadbury has produced the most attention-grabbing Facebook advert of the Easter season, according to Lumen Research’s Platform Pulse research.

Meta and Google have been found liable for a woman’s harmful social media addiction. Is an additional harm the business logic that values the attention advertisers want to monetise?

At Advertising Week Europe in London Wednesday, Meta’s head of creative strategy for the Nordics, Rich Kivell, warned that brands are treating WhatsApp as a “utility pipe” rather than “a canvas for expression”.

Social media platforms are “primary pathway[s]” for organisers of human trafficking efforts to recruit victims in support of a wide-ranging online scam industry centred in South-East Asia. Facebook in particular was “the most widely used platform” for trafficking recruitment, with moderation efforts described by victims as insufficient.

A spokesperson for IAB UK said it aims “to work with the broadest possible membership to help make digital advertising better for everyone and address shared industry challenges.”

Regulating the use of social media needs to be implemented not only for children, but also for the adults who influence them; otherwise, real change is impossible, writes DEPT’s editorial director.

Tech firms have been told by the online safety regulator major sites and apps must enforce minimum age rules with highly effective age checks following continued failings of keeping under-13s safe online.

IAB UK’s head of insight joins host Jack Benjamin to unpack its latest digital adspend report, and explain why video was a driving force for double-digit growth last year.