Let’s list marketing cloud vendors: Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM and…Nielsen? Who knew? The Nielsen cloud was announced last April (no, not on April 1). As you might expect, the Nielsen cloud is mostly about data, including cross-device profiles, a Data Management Platform for audience creation, and several types of analytics. It feeds data to other systems for execution. Nielsen just announced a connector for personalization vendor RichRelevance. It will provide demographics, interest, and intent data on otherwise new and anonymous Web site visitors so that RichRelevance can personalize their treatments..

Here’s another mixed blessing. The new chief of the Federal Communications Commission is expected to overturn rules that required consumer consent before Internet Service Providers like Verizon and Comcast could monetize the behaviors of their customers. Net neutrality is on the chopping block too. Ad industry leaders are happy. Privacy advocates, not so much.

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.