London Live begins broadcasting tonight at 6.30 p.m. on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media. The first television channel devoted exclusively to the capital is being backed by "London Standard" owner Evgeny Lebedev to the tune of GBP15m per year. The 24-hour station aims to break even within three years, at which point it forecasts advertising revenue to hit GBP25m per year.

Microsoft Advertising has launched its own video advertising network. The service will allow advertisers to buy pre-roll spots across 350 accredited publishers embracing multiple platforms. The company is combining its own data with Nielsen and comScore for improved targeting. It claims the move recognises the fact that as audiences, publishers and impressions grow, manual buying will be increasingly replaced by programmatic trading.

Kellogg's is looking for a promotional company to work across all brands in the EMEA region. It is believed the focus for the new agency will be point-of-sale marketing and on-pack promotions. The process began at the start of March when RFIs were sent out, and today shortlisted agencies will receive a brief for presentations that are expected to take place at the end of April.

For the sixth year running, Coca-Cola has been named the world's most powerful brand by CoreBrand. Hershey was in the second spot, with third going to chemical company Bayer. Microsoft has the largest gain year-on-year in the Top 100 list moving up nine positions to number 11. Google has shown the biggest gain since the annual study began in 2008, rising 90 positions to be ranked 26th this year.

Kia is seeking to appoint a CRM agency as it shifts focus to concentrate on retention. Mark Hopkins, marketing director at Kia, and former head of marketing at Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, is leading the review with the help of Hamilton Associates. Hopkins explained the move comes after Kia has started to establish itself in the market and now needs to concentrate on retaining the customers this launch activity has earned.

The commercial TV marketing body Thinkbox will unveil research today that highlights the close links between television viewing and Twitter. Three in four believe hashtags used by television shows are both searched for and used by the public in the hope of building their follower base. The research identifies three stages that advertisers need to prepare for. The first is integrating hashtags in content from the outset, and the second is anticipating appropriate hashtags for upcoming shows. The third is association, whereby brands that are not advertising on television can tap in to discussions started through shows or rival brands' …

Flybe is launching a new advertising strategy that will target rival rail and road companies. It does not have a rival airline for four in five of its domestic routes, and so its latest campaign will seek to get passengers to switch from road and rail with its "Fastest route from A to Flybe" message. At the same time, the airline will be advertising a new compensation scheme it claims is the most generous of any airline and will underline its good punctuality record. Passengers who are delayed by an hour or more will receive a GBP60 credit to their …

The good news for Johnston Press is that it made an operative profit last year of GBP54.3m. The bad news is it was more than wiped out by write-downs on the value of its titles (GBP202m) and printing facilities (GBP60m), leading to a GBP287m loss. The other piece of good news was that digital display was up 44% -- but it only accounts for 7% of overall ad revenue, which as a whole fell by 10% and, in print, was down 13.3%. The only silver lining here was that the overall 10% fall was a slower decline than the 12.7% …

First came a Twitter ban -- and now a week on, the Turkish government has moved to block YouTube. The action comes after an audio recording of a high-level secret meeting was rumoured to have been leaked on the video-sharing site. A spokesperson for the government has confirmed the block was due to the audio recording leak and that it would reinstate YouTube access in the country if the channel removed the content. Google has confirmed that YouTube appears to be inaccessible in Turkey. The site was blocked previously in 2007 by Turkish authorities, but was reinstated three years later.

Sony Music Entertainment's move to Mindshare has turned out to be an 18-month fling after the entertainment giant announced that it has rekindled its long-term relationship with MGOMD. The agency had held the account for 13 years before it lost out to Mindshare in 2012 in a three-way pitch that included MEC. The account includes planning and buying for all Sony's labels other than Columbia, whose media business is run by the7stars.