The regulatory insider

OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy, following a multi-month investigation of its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, by Italy’s data protection authority. Confirmed breaches of the pan-EU regime can attract fines of up to €20 million, or up to 4% of global annual turnover. More uncomfortably for an AI giant like OpenAI, data protection authorities (DPAs) can issue orders that require changes to how data is processed in order to bring an end to confirmed violations. So it could be forced to change how it operates. Or pull its service out of EU Member States where privacy authorities seek to impose changes it doesn’t like.

The Court ruled that article 23 of the AVMS Directive and its concept of ‘announcements made by the broadcasters in connection with its own programmes’ does not cover promotional announcements made by a broadcaster for a radio station belonging to the same group of companies as that broadcaster. However, this is not the case where the programmes subject of those promotional announcements are audiovisual media services and that broadcaster has editorial responsibility for those programmes. Read the full ruling here.

The decline in linear TV viewing is well-documented, but new research from WARC suggests that advertisers risk withdrawing their investment in the channel too quickly. As a result, marketers are seemingly questioning the value of linear TV advertising. Kantar has suggested that linear is no longer a “preferred” channel for marketers, while WARC found that 39 percent of marketers are planning to decrease their investment. But the report noted counter trends that cast doubt on the wisdom of withdrawing from the previously dominant marketing channel.

In a test of Unified ID 2.0 — which was developed by The Trade Desk and is now managed by Prebid — Justin Wohl, CRO of Salon, Snopes and TV Tropes, recorded a 200% increase in CPMs compared to ads served to an authenticated audience with third-party cookies present. The testing started in early Q4 2023 and specifically focused on TVTropes.org’s logged-in user base, which represents about 5% of the site’s 150 million pageviews per month. The cookieless test group was confined to Apple’s Safari browser, which enabled the publisher to evaluate the alternative ID’s revenue impact in an environment isolated from third-party cookies.

Parliament has given its final green light to the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT) directive that will improve product labelling and ban the use of misleading environmental claims. The directive now also needs to receive final approval from the Council, after which it will be published in the Official Journal and member states will have 24 months to transpose it into national law. It is meant to work together with the green claims directive, currently being discussed at committee stage in Parliament. The upcoming green claims directive will be more specific and elaborate the conditions for using environmental claims in greater detail.

"Google has begun blocking third-party cookies for one percent of traffic on its Google Chrome web browser, as it kicks off the long awaited (and delayed) process of sunsetting the tracking tool. The move is designed to let web publishers, advertisers, ad tech companies, and any other business which used third-party cookies test their ability to serve cookie-free traffic."

"In late December, right before the holidays, the FTC announced a notice of proposed rulemaking to update its Children’s Online Privacy Protection (COPPA) Rule. Because contextual advertising doesn’t rely on cookies or other personal identifiers, it’s the monetization method of choice for many child-directed websites and services with “actual knowledge” that they’re collecting personal information from a child, like YouTube. I believe contextual advertising to children will survive the most recent changes to the COPPA Rule, but it may be subject to additional limitations. What concerns the FTC is how contextual ads have changed over the years and how lines between contextual and targeted ads have become more blurred given the sophistication of contextual advertising practices, such as the impact of AI."

UK advertising watchdog says firms could not corroborate claims on environmental impact of air travel

It's that time of year. Holdco-owned GroupM and Magna release their global year-end industry growth forecasts.

Meta has been banned from processing personal data for behavioural advertising across the European Economic Area. In early November, the European…

Adland isn’t exempt from the legislation that’s coming down the pike. Carbon emissions from a company are broken down into scopes. Scope 1 is the direct output of pollutants by a company—think vehicle exhaust. Scope 2 is the pollution made by the energy a company buys like electricity to power the office. Scope 3 is all the other pollution linked to a company’s activities, but not directly created by them, like emissions from vendors. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and California Legislature are targeting all three scopes of emissions.

Apple has bowed to the inevitable and said it “expects to make” App Store policy changes to comply with EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). It said that future changes could also affect how the company charges developers for access to its platforms; how it manages distribution of apps outside of the App Store; and “how, and to what extent, it allows developers to communicate with consumers inside the App Store regarding alternative purchasing mechanisms.”

The three digital advertising companies reported ad revenue growth of 11-26%. Alice Enders, head of research at Enders Analysis, believed there are “substantial indicators of concentration in online advertising” that she ascribed to first-mover advantages in two-sided marketplaces for ads. “Google dominates search, Meta is a scale player in display (with some competition from YouTube and TikTok) and Amazon is the only player in its walled garden,” she told The Media Leader. Enders noted that publishers have been increasingly crowded out of the digital market, with many retreating behind their own walled gardens via paywalls. “Algorithm changes by platforms are of course not helpful to traffic to publisher sites,” she said.

In its decision of 27 June 2017, the Commission found that Google had given preference to the results of its own comparison shopping service over those of competing comparison shopping services on its general search results page. Advocate General Juliane Kokott proposes that the Court of Justice should dismiss the appeal and thus confirm the fine imposed on Google. The self-preferencing of which Google is accused constitutes an independent form of abuse through the application of unreasonable conditions of access to competing comparison shopping services, provided that it has at least potentially anticompetitive effects (as the Commission found in the present case in the form of an exclusionary effect on the market for specialised product searches).

The Advocate General’s Opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice. It is the role of the Advocates General to propose to the Court, in complete independence, a legal solution to the cases for which they are responsible. The Judges of the Court are now beginning their deliberations in this case. Judgment will be given at a later date.

"Of course, DPOs have played a vital role in helping publishers navigate privacy regulations and standards since GDPR came into force five years ago. Their role in balancing the risks posed by regulation and the need to drive growth and innovation cannot be underestimated. Now, with publishers under increasing pressure to deliver revenue and value to brands, DPOs have a new opportunity to continue protecting consumers while enabling innovative solutions that support growth. Strategies and opportunities that DPOs identify to protect personal information, may open up new revenue streams. They help commercial teams develop strategies to build closer relationships with their users, which can in turn create a more valuable audience for their advertising partners. Indeed, in today’s market, DPOs don’t operate in a vacuum; as the company’s liaison with consumers, they are acutely aware of the changing media landscape. For example, the growth of the app ecosystem and connected TV space is changing how brands target and engage with consumers."

The owner of Instagram and Facebook thought an ad-free subscription service would satisfy European data cops – some advocacy groups aren’t so sure

While the marketing landscape has been in a state of upheaval for years now, in 2024, there will be a collision of multiple long-watched industry trends — particularly when it comes to the move to a cookieless ecosystem, new industry applications of artificial intelligence and the transition to a privacy-first reality.  Even with the culmination […]

The UK advertising watchdog has banned two Toyota adverts for condoning driving that disregards its environmental impact in a landmark ruling, stating that the SUV ads had been created without “a sense of responsibility to society”.

UK newspaper The Guardian announced a host of new ad solutions at its Upfronts presentation this week, including a new offering geared specifically towards audiences which have opted out of data collection within its GDPR consent mechanism. The Guardian says the new formats are based on what it sees as the three key pillars of its offering for advertisers: scale, influence, and integrity. The cookie-free offering, called Guardian Light, plays into the last of these three pillars – enabling advertisers to reach audiences while respecting withdrawal of consent.