Privacy, fraud, and other concerns may loom but the third party data industry had a great 2018, growing by 17.5% over the previous year, according to a Winterberry Group study for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Total spending on data and solutions was nearly $19.2 billion. Data management solutions, which includes Customer Data Platforms, grew by 25% to just under $5.0 billion. Download for details.

Oh wait – what about hacks at tech-savvy Amazon, Facebook, Equifax, and so many more? You can add Quora to the list: “approximately 100 million” Quora users’ data was compromised including name, email address, and public comments, the company said yesterday. They’re “very sorry for any concern or inconvenience this may cause.”

BetterUp and Stanford Social Media Lab define workslop as “AI-generated content that looks good, but lacks substance.” Their survey of 1,150 full-time desk workers in the U.S. finds that 40% received workslop in the last month, costing $186 per month per employee. For a 10,000-person company, that’s $9 million annually.