Any remaining hope that current online data sharing practices would somehow survive pretty much died this week, when the European Union’s highest court ruled that placing any cookie requires “active consent” – as in ticking an unticked-by-default check box – and that cookies for data sharing can’t be combined with cookies for other purposes. The ruling also specifies that consent language clearly identify the third parties that will gain access to the data.

Switching gears, this Invoca survey found that data quality is the most common obstacle to using customer data to optimize ad performance (46%). Privacy is next (42%), followed by too much data (31%) and collecting data from silos (28%). It’s a helpful reminder about a problem that’s easy to overlook when you’re planning that oh-so-sexy CDP.

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.