Today is Day 1 of AdWorld, an online stage for highly specialized and highly regarded leaders in the digital marketing world. After my first two webinars, I have a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. It has little to do with the quality of the presentations or the qualifications of the presenters. It's exactly this: the focus of the content (i.e., the objective of digital marketing in general), in its essence, can be somewhat accurately summarized as the art of internet stalking.

The European Union is ahead of us when it comes to protecting your data on the web. I have a feeling we'll eventually see legislation here in the US, as well, mandating that we be a little more forthcoming with how readily we invade consumer privacy. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) employed in the EU, however, has meant that sites there are now required to obtain free consent from their users in regard to cookies.

There's a saying in Japan: ただより高いものはない (romanization: 'tada yori takai mono ha nai'). A literal translation of that might be: "there's nothing more expensive than free stuff". At face value, that seems like a non sequitur. Free stuff is supposed to be free, but the implication here is that it's not. This is probably why the saying gets more commonly equated to the old American adage: "there's no such thing as free lunch".