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FA Cup sponsor Budweiser and augmented reality outfit Aurasma have launched the Budweiser Man of the Match app, which enables football fans to vote for their man of the match and access match stats in real time, while also adding a touch of AR to bring The FA Cup closer.

HTC clearly sees itself as a bit Red Bull with a foray into extreme fashion. Clearly. The Taiwan-based mobile brand tasked two amateur photographers with capturing the world’s first free-fall fashion shoot on a mobile phone – that meant throwing them out of a plane over Arizona and letting them get on with the job at a speed of 126 mph, writes Steve Mullins.

UK online advertising spend spiked 14.4% to reach £4.8 billion in 2011 – up £687 million year-on-year – the largest increase in five years, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau UK and PwC, writes Mark Terry. Video advertising continued to grow and now accounts for 10% of all online display advertising.Expenditure on online video doubled y-o-y to £109 million and the format has grown more than eightfold since 2008.

Google has patented background noise and ambience to enable it to provide advertising ‘based on environmental conditions’. Using tech embedded in users’ mobile phones, the search giant would be able to pick up data on local sound, temperature and humidity and then deliver targeted ads for, say, music based on which songs consumers’ phones are able to detect, or air conditioners in hot weather conditions.

Nine out of 10 people view social networking sites as a new form of entertainment, and more than half say social media sites are important tastemakers in determining what to watch and buy, according to a survey of 750 social network users aged 13 to 49 carried out by The Hollywood Reporter and Penn Schoen Berland, writes Mark Terry.

Despite evidence of formidable ROI, hotels’ digital advertising spend equates to a mere one third of the funds they allocate to non-digital channels, says the Digital IQ Index: Hotels report from L2 and Buddy Media. And the lack of investment is apparent – just 40% of hotel websites feature social sharing, 27% online chat, and 17% user reviews, a lever of inactivity which forfeits billions in value to middlemen such as TripAdvisor.

Mobile is set to change the world in 15 ways, according to a new JWT report. For one thing, it will aid the humanisation of technology – as voice and gesture control become more common, our technology (mobile included) will adapt to us, rather than us adapting to it. And the agency also believes smartphones will help people lead healthier lives by providing information, recommendations and reminders based on data gathered through sensors embedded in users’ clothing, or through other phone capabilities.

Asian nations – excluding Japan – surpass Europe and western markets when it comes to television viewing and video consumption via the Internet or mobiles. And in southeast Asia, accessing the Net while watching TV is the most common media multitasking activity, according to Nielsen’s the Asian Media Landscape Is Turning Digital report.