LiveRamp’s business is built on tracking consumers across platforms, so it makes sense in a fox-guarding-the-chickens sort of way for them to be in the business of preserving privacy as well. They’ve just bought Faktor, an Amsterdam-based consent management platform that will become part of their suite of privacy compliance tools.

Wrapping up an atypically cheerful sequence, major advertising organizations have launched a “Privacy for America” coalition that will lobby for surprisingly reasonable of principles to improve consumer privacy protections. You can argue that they’re only trying to forestall more stringent state legislation and if you’re really cynical you can say they’re trying to hobble Facebook, Google and other data collectors. But it’s a beautiful spring day so let’s just see it as a step in the right direction.

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.