Welcome 2017

If 2016 disappointed, then 2017 holds much promise - hear from Martin Sorrell, Sir John Hegarty, Athony Newley and Hugh Grant

The battle for the Christmas consumer basket was hotter this year then many before, and many of the high street's biggest names have done well, including Tesco (thanks to BBH), Morrisons (thanks to Publicis London), Sainsbury's (thanks to a departing AMV BBDO) and even M&S (thanks to a departing RKCR,Y&R).

But John Lewis, who has won Christmas consistently over the past few years, has found that its ads are ‘no longer groundbreaking’ according to Marketing Week this week.

But for most, time to break out the glitterballs - and here is the last glitterball maker in America:

More crystal ball than glitter ball, WPP boss Martin Sorrell decided to look into the future in The Times, and Mediatel columnist Dominic Mills decided to trawl over the tealeaves.

A big change in coming at Yahoo, where the CEO Marissa Mayer continues to lead the company but steps down from the board as Verizon takes over a large part of the company, with the remaining parts changing its name to 'Altaba'.

In the FT, Sir John Hegarty defended creative against the new upstart, data.

Another great creative, Dave Trott, pondered why no British person would ever want spunk in their water despite what Coca-Cola thinks.

Lidl's latest, thanks to TBWA:

Google translate’s next step, is a ‘multilingual neural machine translation system’. Should we care? Well very much indeed.

Meanwhile, the display fraud roadshow trundles on, and Bob Hoffman says that for every $1 spend, this translates into around 3 cents of ad spend.

In traditional media, two tabloids at polar opposite ends of the political spectrum mull a merger, while in Brighton a new editor jumps ship after just two weeks - thank to Roy Greenslade, who will be leaving his much-loved blog at The Guardian.

The newspapers are still mulling the impact of the Levenson Inquiry, and would you believe that Hugh Grant has written an article *cheers*

On press regulation.

Still in print, Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James talks about his new project, a Hobbit-esque fantasy trilogy loosely based around myths of African folklore.

Meanwhile, The Guardian asks what happened to the Great British curry house, while Tesco uses its ads to push curry:

Read here why Amsterdam’s (in)famous coffee shops are closing.

The latest on Instagram stories, the ad units which some commentators have suggested complete Facebook's appropriation of Snapchat's features. Snapchat meanwhile insist that despite moving their base to London and paying tax in London, this is a 'hub' rather than their 'HQ'. What's the difference?

Food writer Jay Rayner reminds us of things to remain livid about in 2017, including artisan anything, gluten intolerances, raw milk and more.

Lastly, as Buzzfeed published those allegations about PEOTUS in full, it came under criticism for 'going for clicks' or similar. But that's Buzzfeed's business model - it wants your clicks but doesn't carry any display advertising.

Lastly, as a year has passed since David Bowie died some new footage has emerged of Anthony Newley, a great influence on the young Bowie, singing 'Goldfinger' with composer John Barry before Shirley Bassey got her gold-mittened hands on it: