Just two days after the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced a record $240 million GDPR fine for British Airways, the ICO announced a $123 million penalty against Marriott. Like the British Airways fine, this was for a data breach. But it does suggest that marketers should pay serious attention to the ICO’s savage criticism of real time ad bidding.

Martech financial activity in general was up during the quarter just ended, according to LUMA. Martech accounted for by far the largest share of acquisitions and financing within the digital media sector, which also includes adtech, digital content, and direct to consumer brands. CDPs Segment, Tealium and Blueshift all raised significant new funding.

“Ask Meta AI anything” is what you now see instead of the traditional search bar across Meta apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Meta AI will still perform the basic search function but will also answer questions and chat with you. It should hardly be a surprise when a tech company launches a genAI solution these days but this is a bold challenge to Google and Open.ai (it’s also available as a standalone tool at Meta.ai).