Philips

Big Four ad agency Publicis is now buying in to Latin American digital advertising, acquiring Sao Paulo-based Tribal to add to its Digitas online ad group. Digitas CEO Laura Lang said Tribal is "fundamental" to expanding in the growing region. Publicis bought Digitas back in 2006 and has grafted on various international digital acquisitions in the UK, India, Singapore, China and its native France, so this will be a foothold across the Atlantic.

After taking full control of its Teletrax video fingerprinting JV and folding it in to its own Content Identification unit, Philips is now spinning out the merged entity as a new and renamed operation - Civolution. Headquartered in Holland with an office in Hollywood, the new unit has immediately got VC funding from Prime Technology Venture for the spin-out, with Philips also becoming a partner in the VC house itself.

The BBC is encouraging TV and set-top box makers to adopt an open IPTV platform it hopes to develop. At Cannes' Mipcom conference Wednesday, future media and technology director Erik Huggers said the broadcaster is mulling building an "open industry standard" that would put web video on the lounge TV. Crucially, it would allow rival program-makers to add their own content, too.

Funny this: this Reuters story is supposed to be embargoed until Monday but somehow got published tonight (the news was previously reported last month by Techcrunch).

I'm now in New York where I shall be attending next week's FIPP/ABM B2B industry meeting which is usually very worthwhile.

Teletrax, the UK-headquartered TV and online video monitoring and analytics firm, is being completely acquired by Philips, following a board approval by previous owner Medialink Worldwide, the media services firm. Philips currently owns 24percent of the Teletrax, and will assume Medialink's 76 percent ownership stake for a reimbursement of up to approximately $275K of certain net operating costs incurred by the company prior to closing, it said.