Who needs Game of Thrones when we can watch Google and Facebook battle with publishers to control the marketing world? Jumping right into Season 11, we find unrest in France, where media vassals have created the Gravity Alliance, which pools their data resources to offer a programmatic advertising alternative to the overlords. But there’s already dissent among the rebels: two other publisher consortia have emerged that let advertisers book digital campaigns across their combined properties but don’t provide a merged data pool.

When it comes to naming products, TVSquared is either super-ironic or just doesn’t care: they call their new prediction tool “Predict”. It draws on TVSquared’s worldwide database of direct response TV ad results to “predict” (get it?) which buys will generate the most response. Then it then executes the purchases.

Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation.  The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.