Four trade groups representing 4,000 publishers have blasted Google's approach to compliance with Europe's upcoming GDPR. The new rules are set to take effect at the end of the month. Under its new GDPR-compliant policy, Google, as a provider of digital advertising services to publishers, will have sole control over data sent to it by publishers or collected from publishers' websites.

Two new initiatives -- a concerted effort by Apple and a massive educational effort called the "Pro-Truth Pledge" -- could help eliminate much of the fake news BS that is really messing up the U.S. at the moment. On another front, President Donald Trump's plan to meet with Kim Jong-un reminds me of a pivotal meeting between former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and then Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Facebook reportedly has developed a new advertising service designed to predict the future behavior of consumers. The service uses FBLearner Flow, an artificial intelligence prediction engine the company introduced in 2016. The technology enables companies to target people based on decisions they haven't yet made. The data the new service taps is aggregated and anonymized.

Mozilla has launched the first full edition of its Internet Health Report. The report is "an open source effort to explore the state of human life on the Internet," said Mozilla Executive Director Mark Surman. It consists of research and analysis about the Internet compiled by researchers, engineers, data scientists, policy analysts and artists in Mozilla's extended community.

YouTube intends to ramp up its efforts to combat conspiracy mongers, perhaps in response to the rash of conspiracy videos that trended following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month. Among other things, YouTube will supply links to relevant Wikipedia pages and other credible websites to provide viewers with a counter narrative, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Google has said it will stop serving ads for cryptocurrencies and related content in June. The ban includes, but is not limited to, initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice. Google also will bar aggregators and affiliates from serving ads for cryptocurrencies and related content. Facebook adopted a similar policy earlier this year.

Google's Chrome Web browser has begun blocking some of the Net's most annoying types of ads. Chrome's built-in ad filter blocks ads based on standards devised by the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group whose membership roster includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and The Washington Post. The group aims to improve consumer experiences with advertising.

User engagement with podcasts has been steadily increasing, and many listeners actually prefer longer-format content, based on results of Apple's Podcast Analytics reported this week. The service, which Apple launched late last year, gives podcasters a way to track performance metrics including number of listeners, total time listened and time per device.

The social media industry may have to struggle to rehydrate in light of some surprising and troubling metrics Facebook released on Wednesday. In addition to a pause in user growth, there have been signs that user engagement may have reversed course. The decline may have something to do with Facebook's efforts to recover from accusations that it has provided fertile ground for fake news.

Google on Thursday announced a new feature that will let users mute so-called "reminder ads" in third-party apps and websites that are powered by its ad engine. It plans to expand this feature to its own services, including Gmail, YouTube and Google Search, in the coming months. The new tool is the latest addition to Google's dashboard for ad controls.

Facebook once again has found itself at the center of a media storm, following Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement of plans to shift its focus away from news and business content and toward interactions between friends and family. The shift follows more than a year of heavy criticism directed against Facebook, including blame for failing to combat fake news during the 2016 presidential election.

Demandbase has launched its Conversion Solution, adding AI-enabled intent data to its ABM platform, which already incorporates targeting and engagement solutions. It sends sales teams relevant and actionable alerts and insights across multiple channels in real time when one of their accounts is in the news, visiting their company's website, or demonstrating interest in their products.

Moves that allowed major e-commerce players to jockey for position both off and on the Internet made headlines in 2017. "The year was a triumph for market leaders," said Mike Comstock, a senior adviser at GrandCanals. "Leading companies like Amazon, Target and Walmart just got stronger, as they have the resources to either build or buy whatever they need to win."

B2B ad spending will increase 13 percent in 2018 to hit $4.6 billion from this year's estimated $4.07 billion, eMarketer has predicted. However, its proportion of all U.S. digital ad spending will remain unchanged at 4.9 percent, which implies growth in other digital ad spend areas as well. Desktops and laptops will continue to attract the bulk of B2B digital ad spend, according to eMarketer.

Amazon has denied a report that it has been working on a free, ad-supported video platform to complement its subscription-based Amazon Prime Video service. Amazon has been in talks with various television networks, movie studios and other media entities about providing content to the site, according to the Monday report. Such a service would place Amazon in direct competition with Apple.

Social media influencer advertising has become a major factor in e-commerce. Marketers of both big and small brands long have committed large chunks of their advertising budgets to endorsements by well-known personalities. Social media influencer campaigns are based on that tried-and-true formula, but the implication is that the endorsements are voluntary.

Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner, the brains behind both the new Vivaldi browser and the early Opera browser, has accused Google of retaliating against his company after he questioned its customer privacy practices. Vivaldi's Google Adwords campaigns mysteriously were suspended just two days after von Tetzchner's criticisms of Google's handling of customer data were published this spring, he said.

Advertising technology, or ad tech, is a relatively new business segment. Both Google and Facebook have been very successful with this new advertising model. Going forward, will ad tech be important and rapidly expand to a wider segment, or will it be limited to the way certain companies show value and grow? Advertising has gone through wave after wave of change over the decades.

Stung by charges that it allowed fake news stories to proliferate during the 2016 election cycle, Facebook on Thursday began rolling out broadly a feature meant to regain the trust of its members. The tool effectively will surround questionable stories with related news stories offering different perspectives -- a strategy intended to help readers discern where the truth lies.

Instagram's Stories feature, which launched one year ago, has achieved widespread engagement among businesses that want to raise their brand awareness and expand their e-commerce penetration, the company said. The tool, launched in August 2016, allows users to create digital slide shows out of photos and videos in order to convey a story. More than 250 million daily active users are on Stories.

A new technology that Google uses to track billions of credit card transactions is unsafe, overly intrusive, and possibly in violation of federal law, according to a complaint EPIC filed Monday with the FTC. EPIC urged the FTC to investigate Google over its Store Sales Management program, criticizing it as unfair and deceptive to consumers, and lacking an easy way to opt out.

Facebook on Wednesday launched "Discover Growth," a global ad campaign targeting B2B marketers. The 30-day U.S. ad campaign, which will target direct-response marketers as well as traditional brands, will run both on and off the Facebook platform. The on-platform campaign reportedly will consist of one ad per day on Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network.

Google recently announced the end of its policy of scanning user emails for targeted advertising purposes -- a controversial practice that riled privacy advocates and spurred legal challenges. Gmail is the world's most widely used email provider, with more than 1.2 billion users. Google attributed its decision to gains it has made in the enterprise.

A good motto for modern marketing would be, "When in doubt, check the data." Perhaps an even better one would be, "When not in doubt, check the data to see if you should be." There's never been a time when we've had such an ability to compile, collate, analyze and understand marketing data. It's not possible to get by on intuition -- even if it's rooted in deep experience and personal knowledge.

Google earlier this week unveiled Google Attribution, a tool that uses machine learning to measure the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across a variety of devices and channels. Part of a series of new measurement tools introduced at Google Marketing Next, Google Attribution aims to help marketers determine what is driving consumers to make their online purchasing decisions.

Google reportedly has been working on a plan to install an ad blocker onto its Chrome browser. It also has been considering a collaboration with Microsoft, Facebook and other firms to develop a set of standards that would determine which types of advertising to block from websites. That effort presumably would aim at blocking abusive ads without jeopardizing ads from legitimate firms.

Burger King in essence hijacked the voice-activated Google Home speakers in some consumers' homes. In a 15-second television ad, the camera zooms in on a young man wearing the company uniform who says, "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" The trigger phrase for Google's AI Assistant activated Home speakers situated nearby, prompting them to read Wikipedia's description of the Whopper.

Verizon on Monday confirmed reports that it will rebrand its AOL and Yahoo businesses under a new entity called "Oath." AOL CEO Tim Armstrong delivered the message via a tweet. The rebranding is part of a plan to reinvest millions into the legacy digital content companies with the aim of creating a major new platform. The "Yahoo" and "AOL" names will live on under the overarching Oath brand.

Trolling, cyberbullying, harassment and just plain nastiness have become commonplace online, and this situation is likely to remain unchanged or worsen over the next decade, suggests a Pew Research report released Wednesday. Researchers polled more than 1,500 technology experts, academics, and business and government leaders on the future of free speech online.

Medium, the online publishing platform launched by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, has announced a $5 monthly subscription membership upgrade that promises a better reading experience and better content. Medium on Thursday opened the subscription offer to a limited number of people who meet certain criteria, according to Williams, who is Medium's CEO.