It was a long Facebook post, written by somebody in deep pain who laid their soul bare for their entire network to see. What were the possible unintended consequences of this online confessional?

Last week, both YouTube and Facebook gave the web video channel InfoWars and its editor Alex Jones a long overdue time-out, but it's important to put those actions in perspective. Back in March of 2017, Paul Joseph Watson - then InfoWars editor - tweeted, "I'm not sure the left understand the monumental ass-whupping being dished out to them on YouTube."

I am not an expert digital advertising technologist by any stretch of the imagination, but I follow closely what happens in digital ad and marketing tech, since it's having such a profound effect on every aspect of our business. Which is why the New York Interactive Advertising Exchange (NYIAX) interests me.

It's hard to imagine a media future that doesn't involve the delivery of fewer, more relevant ads. However, that's not what's happening at the moment. Ad loads are up on TV. Both satellite and terrestrial radio have increased their ad loads. And the explosion in connected digital screens - in people's hands, on their desks, in taxis, on gas station pumps, on the sides of buildings - means that many more ads are being shown to more people in more places than ever before. In spite of that trend, I believe the explosion of ads will slow down and then …

The prediction of consolidation is finally coming to fruition. The ad-tech space has been bloated for years, and clear winners and losers are beginning to emerge. Whether through acquisition or demise, the landscape is becoming clearer. I see three key themes driving the M&A in the market.

Lately, I've grown to hate my Facebook feed. But I'm also morbidly fascinated by it. It fuels the fires of my discontent with a steady stream of posts about bone-headedness and sheer WTF behavior. As it turns out, I'm not alone. Many of us are morally outraged by our social media feeds. But does all that righteous indignation lead to anything?

The year was 1999, and at the Consumer Electronics Show, the talk was all about a newfangled device called the digital video recorder: the DVR. Two companies were fighting for dominance in the space, Replay TV and TiVo. Replay TV won "Best of Show" and Walt Mossberg, writing in The Wall Street Journal, crowned ReplayTV the winner over TiVo in a head-to-head review. Anthony Wood, Replay's founder, was on a roll. He was the king of the world of time-shifted TV. He had seen the future, and built it.

It's a good time to be alive. If you don't believe me, try subscribing to the Future Crunch newsletter.

While companies in the advertising, marketing and media worlds are entitled to a certain degree of boosterism, the claims for technology solutions often reflected in the press are sometimes a bit extreme. Here's what I try to keep in mind as I review what seem to be inflated claims:

This industry loves a good acronym. First it was DSP (demand-side platform), then came DMP (data-management platform), and now we have CDPs to contend with. A CDP is defined as a customer-data platform, and many people are confused about the difference between a DMP and CDP.