German anti-trust regulators have attacked the heart of Facebook’s ad business by ordering it to let consumers use the service without agreeing to data tracking outside of their Facebook account. The ruling cites Facebook’s dominant market position as reason to make it meet more stringent consent standards than competitors.

When California passed a strong Consumer Privacy Act last year, many expected it would be watered down before taking effect in 2020. So far that hasn’t happened and, with the deadline fast approaching, it seemed the law might keep its teeth. Or not: it turns out that California is still working on regulations to implement the law and, sure enough, the Association of National Advertisers and other groups are lobbying hard to limit its impact. We’ll see if public concerns about privacy can overcome industry pressure. Anybody taking bets?

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.