Customer Data Platform vendor Segment has introduced Cross Domain Analytics, which lets brands track customer activity across their own digital properties by using second party (i.e., shared) cookies. This lets them avoid reliance on third party cookies owned by other companies. Segment notes that second party cookies are less likely to be blocked than third party cookies, providing more complete information. The downside is Cross Domain Analytics won’t track customers across other companies’ properties.

Ad blocking by consumers isn’t a response to fake news, although it does threaten the economics of both legitimate and illegitimate publishers. A study from AdBlock Plus and Global Web Index found that 40% of respondents used an ad blocker in the past month. Ad blocking is likely to increase since it’s more common among younger users, just over half the respondents still don’t know ad blockers are available, of U.S. and mobile ad blocking happens less often in the U.S. (so far) than in Asia.

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.