A community nutrition watchdog, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), is launching a new ad campaign later this week, linking McDonald’s products to heart disease. While the ad is limited to Washington DC area TV sets, the ad’s pre-release on PCRM’s social networks has generated a global response.

Global online advertising spend is rebounding in spectacular style. Latest forecasts say businesses will pay out $98.6 billion in 2014 – a huge rise on the £55.2 billion they spent in 2009. Breaking down those big numbers, two points emerge – the biggest growth is in the Asia-Pacific market, and social remains a small part of the online ad scene.

UPS, the global shipping firm, is launching a new “logistics” ad campaign in the coming days to boost its credentials with small businesses by leveraging social media networking power. Catchy ad music aside, this could be one of the best examples to date of social media utilization for B2B.

Facebook over the weekend quietly unveiled (and then pulled again) a new pages-discovery system. The new initiative recommends pages to users, compiling the most popular pages in a user’s network and combines them with individual interests to create personalized “Like” recommendations. Considering the many other tools recently released for mining potential customer “likes”, Facebook is trying to ensure the wave of brands coming onto the social network don’t get lost in the stampede.

Tipp-Ex has become the darling of the tech press after launching a viral interactive video that’s racked up millions of YouTube views since its launch two weeks ago. Not bad for a decidedly low-tech brand. But how does it stand up to some of the most successful virals we’ve seen lately. Can it outdo the Roger Federer Gillette video from earlier this summer, for example? The results may surprise you.

Yes, Google Instant is a time-saver. But does this new innovation in search (the first we’ve had in ages) really lead to smarter search results as Google claims, or does it tell us what we already know, just more quickly? We took it through its paces in multiple locations. Here’s what we found.

Social media users are getting older. According to the latest research by Flowtown, the average social media participant is 37-years-old, and the fastest growing demographic is 50-plus. But don’t worry about mom third-wheeling your Facebook page. She is feeling right at home with her favorite social brands.

It could be just what couch potatoes everywhere have been waiting for – YouTube (as well as much of the rest of the Web) is coming to your TV, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced yesterday. Before you ready your Microsoft WebTV cracks, consider this: Americans alone view over 13 billion videos a month on YouTube. That’s a lot of eyeballs.

The Coca-Cola Happiness Machines are multiplying, even in a place where there’s little mirth today: London. That’s right, Coke has taken its viral YouTube video sensation to the other side of the pond, setting up its wondrous vending machine to a university campus in London with some predictably sweet results.

Nike released a new iPhone app yesterday to act as a personal coach for runners. As well as functions such as a GPS map with pace speedometer and inspirational Lance Armstrong audio quotes, the Nike+ GPS will allow runners to connect and compete with their friends for better runs in a network called “Challenge Me”. But is Nike’s entry into this marketplace too late?