20 January 2022, Brussels, Belgium – The European Parliament has voted to accept new amendments to its position on the Digital Services Act, which will be put to a final vote today. A number of these provisions give cause for concern for all those who support an efficient, secure and prosperous European digital market.
Amendment 202, on online interfaces, prohibits service providers from ever asking for consent for data processing if a user has objected “by automated means using technical specifications”. We are concerned that this means that individual website or app publishers who want to request consent for legitimate purposes will be barred from doing so if a user has checked a box at the browser or OS level. This would strengthen the gatekeeper role of dominant players and have a disproportionate effect on small publishers.
Amendments 498 and 499 demand that services provide equal access and functionality to users who refuse consent for data processing for the purposes of advertising. This risks creating a ‘free rider’ problem and putting in peril huge swathes of the ad-supported information economy.
Commenting on the vote, IAB Europe Director of Public Policy Greg Mroczkowski said:
“The use of personal data in advertising is already tightly regulated by existing legislation. It is disappointing that in a mistaken belief that targeted advertising causes online disinformation or breaches privacy and data protection principles, MEPs have decided to pass amendments that not only overlap with the GDPR and existing consumer law but risk undermining these rules, as well as the entire ad-supported digital economy.
“We urge policymakers to take good account of the progress currently being made in GDPR enforcement and reconsider these amendments during the trilogue process to ensure we end up with a DSA that provides legal certainty for all actors.
“Ultimately, a Digital Services Act that boosts transparency and certainty across the online economy is in everyone’s interests. We will be consulting with our members and all interested stakeholders to try to come up with solutions that are workable, secure and efficient.”
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is poised to shape Europe’s digital future for decades to come. But as the legislation has been debated and discussed, there have been a significant number of proposals that would vastly expand its scope – and could profoundly change the way we operate online.
With the European Parliament plenary session to be held next week in Strasbourg, IAB Europe organised a roundtable discussion, The Digital Services Act: What Can We Expect from the Plenary Session?, where we were pleased to host Slavina Ancheva, Parliamentary Assistant to MEP Eva Maydell (EPP, Bulgaria), Benedikt Blomeyer (Director EU Policy, Allied for Startups), Tim Geenen (Managing Director, LiveRamp) and Fernando Parreira (Business Director, SAPO). The discussion was moderated by MLex’s Chief Correspondent Matthew Newman and saw participants share their insights on the state of play of the DSA debate.
One of the most prominent proposals in the DSA has been to introduce a blanket ban on targeted ads. This essential – unfairly maligned – low-cost marketing tool has been transformative for businesses large and small throughout the pandemic. It has allowed SMEs to reach new audiences across Europe and convert them into paying customers. Enterprises that have embraced digital tools have fared significantly better amid the uncertainty of Covid-19 and, as Allied for Startups’ Benedikt Blomeyer highlighted last Wednesday, they are essential for startups too.
MEPs in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee voted to avoid the blanket ban that would have had devastating consequences for consumers and businesses across Europe. This is to be welcomed but concerns remain about the scope of new measures that could make their way in during the plenary vote. Indeed, Slavina Ancheva cautioned that proposals for a ban could reappear during the plenary session, though she does not believe such a proposal would garner enough support to pass.
There are also open questions around practical implications of a ban on targeting minors, with an underlying concern about whether age verification of users’ will be allowed under the new rules. If a robust, reliable and affordable method of age verification cannot be used, these measures could potentially amount to a full ban on targeted advertising.
There has also been talk by some MEPs of using a wide-ranging ban on so-called ‘dark patterns’ as a way of banning targeted advertising by the back door. Sweeping language in the proposed Article 13a (1)(b) and (e) would take away the right of publishers to independently hold a dialogue with their users on consent for advertising purposes and heavily interfere with existing provisions in the EU’s consumer law and data protection framework, which are already being interpreted and applied by Data Protection Authorities (DPAs). Similarly, proposals relating to ‘consent’ around the use of personal data in targeting risk duplicating and undermining existing legislation.
Overlapping and sometimes conflictual rules would represent a significant regulatory burden for thousands of small businesses across Europe and could undermine the broader digital advertising ecosystem.
What is needed is proper enforcement of the EU’s world-leading General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), not new measures – a point agreed with by Fernando Parreira and Tim Geenen, who said the way to go for any new legislative instrument should be to empower users in line with the GDPR requirements.
There remains a wide divergence in the views of policymakers and the final outcome remains unclear. This was illustrated during a Targeting Startups event which saw MEP Henna Virkkunen (EPP, Finland) state that targeted ads are vital to SMEs. On the other hand, MEP Patrick Breyer (Greens/EFA, Germany) claimed that contextual advertising is an adequate replacement for the existing business model. Above all this, the lead rapporteur Christel Schaldemose (S&D, Denmark) spoke of her aim of “reinforcing the intention of the GDPR” by making it easier “to refuse digital ads than accepting ads”.
Such a discrepancy of views will need to be reconciled ahead of the vote, a task that will not be easy. MEPs must remain alive to the risks of a ban or heavy restrictions on targeted advertising. Otherwise, businesses and consumers could be facing far-reaching, irreversible unintended consequences that will impact the very fabric of our free and open internet.
14 December 2021, Brussels, Belgium - IAB Europe issued a cautious welcome to the report approved today by the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) on the proposed Digital Services Act (DSA).
The IMCO votes mark a critical step in the passage of the DSA ahead of a plenary vote in the Parliament in January and crucial trilogue negotiations among the EU institutions later next year.
While some MEPs in IMCO had called for a ban or harsh restrictions on data-driven advertising, the subsequent debate brought the value of targeting for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Europe’s media and to consumers themselves into sharp relief.
Commenting on the IMCO votes, IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan said:
We’re pleased that IMCO did not agree to a blanket ban on “targeted ads” which would have done nothing to enhance users’ safety online, including addressing the major societal challenge of online disinformation, and would have had other significant unintended consequences. Data-driven advertising helps smaller publishers and providers of other online services compete with the biggest players and ensures that users have access to a diversity of sources without paying for subscriptions. The value of targeted ads as one of the most useful marketing tools available for SMEs has been well-evidenced, and we must not take away the chance to support these small businesses who fuel our European economy.
Concerns remain about the risk of overlap and contradictions with EU data protection law if some of the language approved today ends up in the DSA. So-called ‘dark patterns’ influencing user choices should be mitigated by the use of existing tools of enforcement, including detailed guidance provided by Data Protection Authorities. We call on the Parliament and the Council to be sensitive to the risk of running into a legal quagmire in the remaining phases of the legislative process.
We’ll continue to engage with policymakers to ensure there is good appreciation of the strong consumer protections that are already built into the law and of existing industry efforts to enable transparency and choice in relation to the use of personal data for digital advertising and marketing.
In this blog post, as featured in the EU Observer, IAB Europe's Director, Public Policy, Greg Mroczkowski, shares what has been missing from the debate on personalisation in advertising and how privacy and personalisation can in fact go hand-in-hand.
As the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) prepares to vote on its opinion on the Digital Services Act (DSA) next week, the fate of targeted ads will become clearer. There’s been much speculation over what the precise outcome will be when it comes to targeted ads but the debate has highlighted how digital advertising is not a simple black and white issue but one that has major ramifications for small businesses and small publishers across Europe.
Ahead of the vote, it’s important to remember that targeted ads are a vital part of the day-to-day operation of thousands of businesses in Europe. They are effective at reaching new audiences, converting those audiences into customers, and giving businesses the ability to compete and grow. Targeted advertising is more than twice as effective at reaching new customers than contextual advertising, and is a low-cost, essential tool that is particularly useful for SMEs. And SMEs drive more than half of Europe’s GDP, employing over 100 million Europeans.
After the Covid-19 pandemic -- which has pushed operations for most businesses almost exclusively online as lockdowns became the norm -- many SMEs, which are the backbone of Europe’s economy, are still recovering. They simply cannot afford to lose the ability to effectively market their products right now.
For publishers, the situation has been most challenging too. Targeted ads command a premium that contextual advertising just doesn’t match. Where traditional media outlets have faced declining print circulations, digital advertising has proven a fruitful new source of revenue for many publishers. Indeed, at last week’s European News Media Summit, Commissioner Breton highlighted the dramatic drop in ad revenues seen by the traditional news media which has been grappling with a rapid digital transition.
What has been missing from the debate on personalisation in advertising is that privacy and personalisation can go hand in hand. Safeguarding privacy and data protection must be paramount, and there are tools to do that, in the form of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Enforcement of the existing law should pave the way for ensuring that the data-driven advertising business model is kept in check.
We must also remember that targeted ads help to fund a free and open internet. With 68 percent of Europeans saying they would never pay for news content online, the revenues generated by targeted ads play a vital role in supporting a pluralistic media landscape and maintaining free access to news and content. Heavy restrictions on the ability to address marketing communications would drastically reshape the internet as we know it and restrict access to reliable sources of news to a privileged few. In an era of rising concerns over disinformation, this would be yet another blow.
Contextual advertising, often pushed as a catch-all solution by opponents of targeted ads, is not a panacea. While it is a relevant part of the online advertising ecosystem, they simply do not deliver the same reach to new customers or return on investment that targeting can. Giving businesses the flexibility to choose how they advertise to their customers and select the tools that serve them best is an essential element of the digital economy.
As we reach an important milestone in the updating of Europe’s digital rules, we must ensure that users are empowered with enhanced transparency to make informed choices about ad-supported content – in line with the significant transparency and accountability requirements under the GDPR'. It will go someway to helping policymakers ensure the DSA becomes a successful digital regulatory framework fit for the Twenty First Century which will drive and sustain businesses of all sizes for many years to come.
Nick Welch was elected as the Chair of the Programmatic Trading Committee on 17th November at the most recent monthly meeting of 2021. Replacing David Goddard (Vice President of Business Development, DoubleVerify), Nick was elected to lead the committee’s work to increase understanding of the programmatic ecosystem and the impact it is having on digital advertising and influence industry initiatives to improve the ecosystem.
Commenting on his newly appointed role and vision for the committee, Nick said “Having worked in programmatic for over 11 years, I believe we are entering a really exciting time for the digital advertising industry. In our role as the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading committee, we have an integral part to play in scaling the industry’s programmatic knowledge, and ensuring it has a key place in the ecosystem in the future. By better supporting educational efforts we have a real opportunity to improve opinion on programmatic, drive results and make a huge difference. I look forward to working closely and collaboratively with the diverse members of this committee to ensure that our work and outputs provide a valuable source to many.”
Nick is an active member of the Programmatic Trading Committee, and now, as Chair, will follow on the great work of former chairs to create channels and connections that enable all committee members to contribute their knowledge and support all industry stakeholders.
The Programmatic Trading Committee is a multi-stakeholder group that aims to increase understanding of the programmatic ecosystem and the impact it is having on digital advertising and influence industry initiatives to improve the ecosystem.
For any IAB Europe Members who would like to get involved in the committee, please contact Lauren Wakefield – wakefield@iabeurope.eu.
About Nick Welch, Programmatic Director, Northern Europe, Integral Ad Science (IAS)
Nick Welch is the Programmatic Director for Northern Europe at Integral Ad Science, responsible for driving IAS’ programmatic business in the region. Nick supports clients’ media strategies such as the impending cookie deprecation and promotes robust cross-industry collaboration with the world’s biggest agencies, advertisers, publishers, and industry bodies.
Nick has been part of the advertising industry for more than 20 years and draws his experience from working across the advertising landscape. Beginning in traditional media like Radio, TV, press through to digital encompassing mobile, web, In-game with the last 10 years in the world of data and programmatic. He has held business development and sales roles on both the buy-side and sell-side of the ecosystem, with brands, agencies, and publishers, including Microsoft, Orange, SpotX, Bauer, and InMobi.
Nick has been a regular contributor of the IAB Europe Programmatic committee, widening industry discussions around sustainability, quality media, transparency, contextual and misinformation
Have your say in IAB Europe’s Annual Industry Polls - Brand Safety and Post Third-Party Cookie
IAB Europe has launched two of its annual polls to assess the status of Brand Safety in Digital Advertising and to understand how the industry is preparing for the depletion of Third-Party Cookies.
Brand Safety Poll
Whilst there are lots of studies which look at consumer views, we want to find out what is actually happening from advertising industry experts. We want your views on how Brand Safety has been tackled in 2021 and to determine what action needs to be taken in 2022.
Have your say in the Brand Safety Poll here.
Post Third-Party Cookie Poll
The depletion of third-party cookies will bring about fundamental changes to our industry, creating new opportunities and challenges. How prepared are you for these changes? And what impact do you think it will have on targeting, measurement, verification and overall investment?
Have your say in the Third-Party Cookie Poll here.
The polls will each take no more than 10 minutes, and by taking part you will be helping us to better understand the challenges that you are facing in these two critical areas. The results will be benchmarked against previous years' results and will be used to ensure our focus for 2022 addresses the key areas that need tackling.
The deadline for both polls is Friday 28th January.
Take the Brand Safety Poll here.
Take the Post Third-Party Cookie Poll here.
Despite a long break from physical events, E-commerce Germany is back and ready to go! They're not only bringing back the E-commerce Berlin Expo in February 2022 but also all the events associated with it. E-commerce Germany Awards is, of course, one of them. There are exciting times ahead, so let's find out what they will bring!
A fifth edition of the E-commerce Germany Awards is coming in 2022. With a special gala to summarise and award the winners, the prestigious contest has become a jewel in the German e-commerce events calendar, attracting increasingly more participants submissions each year.
The awards have gained acclaim across the continent. Does everyone qualify for the competition, however?
Businesses, service providers, and agencies active in e-commerce may enter any one of the twelve categories.
For the entry to be considered, the submitting company must meet a few requirements:
Does this sound like your company? Don't hesitate to submit your entry today. In the following paragraph, you will find the upcoming categories for the 2022 edition of the E-commerce Germany Awards.
As a result of market feedback, E-commerce Germany has responded to the demand to recognise the industry's real innovators, who tackle new sectors each year.
As a result, they've revamped their Awards categories, adding a few new ones as well as modifying some.
In 2022, companies will be competing in as many as 12 categories:
Submissions from both the real revolutionaries in e-commerce solutions and those who help them thrive every day are welcome.
Among all the winners from last year, you can recognize Hubspot, Sendcloud, Infobip, and Fraugster.
Submissions to the E-commerce Germany Awards are accepted until 26 November 2021. Submit your company here
Who will evaluate the submissions?
You can be sure that the group of jurors will persuade you if the categories haven't yet. Could you imagine the feeling of having your submission reviewed by industry giants?
Imagine no longer - submit it straight away. contestants' submissions will be scrutinised by representatives from companies such as:
and many, many more. There is a separate page for Jurors with all the details.
Every year, e-Commerce Germany combine their ceremony of recognising the winners with a huge networking party before the actual E-commerce Berlin Expo. At the ceremony, the winners are announced. During the event, you will also get the chance to meet the Jury and other industry influencers and experts. A must-attend event. You can meet in person to celebrate, share joy, and talk about e-commerce!
Pencil the date - see you on the 8th of February in Berlin.
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For further questions or partnership requests, please reach out to E-Commerce Gemrany's PR Manager, John Cyprych at awards@ecommerceberlin.com.
Learn more about the E-Commerce Berlin Expo 2022 here.
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Since Google announced that third-party cookies were to become obsolete - extended now to 2023 - there have, and continue to be many questions about how digital marketing and advertising will work in a post third-party cookie world. Among them is the question of attribution. With current attribution and measurement techniques so heavily reliant on cookies, what will happen to attribution? And how will ad success measurement work in this new era?
To better understand the challenge of attribution and what we can expect for measuring success in the future, we caught up with members of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee to share their thoughts and expertise.
Q&A with:
In this week's member-guest blog post, we hear from Anna Sikora, Client Services Partner at PubMatic, on all things In-App. She discusses the common misconceptions for in-app advertising and how brands have an opportunity to reach highly-engaged, valuable audiences.
Over the past 18 months, in-app advertising has become more sophisticated creating an opportunity for brands to tap into premium, brand-safe inventory at scale. However, due to a lack of understanding many brands are still either avoiding in-app advertising or simply transferring desktop and mobile web strategies, rather than approaching in-app in an up-to-date way. To put it simply, brands are missing out on an opportunity to reach highly-engaged, valuable audiences.
The App Revolution and Reset
Globally, app installs increased by 31% in 2021 as consumers increasingly look for highly accessible ways to access a variety of quality content and entertainment. This has caused a significant rise in the volume of quality in-app ad impressions available. Concurrently, header bidding has made in-app highly scalable and initiatives such as app ads.txt have removed early brand safety challenges. Yet somehow, misconceptions remain, ad budgets have not shifted and in-app remains a relatively untapped opportunity.
In order to reinvigorate brands’ interest in in-app, there needs to be a serious reset in the way publishers and tech platforms talk about in-app and there needs to be a concerted effort to help brands understand the new lay of the land and how to engage today’s app audiences.
The In-App Difference
There is often a misconception that in-app campaigns are broadly similar to desktop and can be retrofitted. However, this is not the case and in-app needs its own strategy in order to be effective. For brands, strategically bought in-app offers many benefits such as:
In order to realise these benefits there has to be a desire on the buy-side to connect with the sell-side and the sell-side must be willing to be flexible and start speaking the same language. Publishers and SSPs need to educate brands on the types of deals that are available and provide deep insights into app audiences to make in-app a worthwhile investment for brands. The challenge so far is that in-app has been an afterthought, and in extreme cases run as a blind buy with very little transparency or control for buyers, resulting in a black box experience and no repeat business for publishers as a result.
In-App Best Practices
For many brands, the first port of call to embark on, or restart in-app is to talk directly to publishers and understand their apps and advertising opportunities. Many SSPs have deep relationships with publishers and are leveraging these to benefit the buy-side. Reach out to SSPs that have in-app expertise. Many run roadshows that enable brands and publishers to speak directly and create a common understanding of the opportunity.
Ensure your campaigns run across a diverse portfolio of apps and formats in order to understand where you can best reach your audience and what makes them engage the most with your ads. Do not be afraid to experiment with innovative formats such as in-ads product rotation and customisation or in-app/in-play formats (ads that appear within the app or game content). These are the perfect places to run brand campaigns and the tracking that is possible in-app enables you to follow consumers into the purchase funnel and better understand consumer behaviour.
Publishers are using the fact that device IDs are disappearing to get their data in order and to create and offer first-party data segments, as well as third-party. Use this data to seek out new audiences and attach value to in-app. If possible feed in your own first-party data to create highly addressable, app-specific, privacy-safe buys that deliver superior performance.
Use technology to access all levels of inventory, first-look, targeted PMP, open market, in order to understand what works best for you. Also work with partners who can offer you bespoke in-app PMPs that give you a clear understanding of who you are advertising to, where you are advertising to them, and what they do after seeing your ads in different environments and in different formats. Ask for total transparency into the buy and reporting that you can easily understand, not sprawling spreadsheets that need a data analyst to decipher and translate into actionable insights.
Hopes For the Next 12 Months
It’s hard to predict what the next year will look like for in-app as it’s a constantly evolving space, but there are some solid trends that have emerged that look set to create a solid foundation from which brands can realise the full potential of in-app.
A huge amount of effort is going into providing brands with easy-to-access, easy-to-understand sources of education which is resulting in strategic in-app planning and buying and campaigns that deliver superior performance compared to earlier campaigns, which is blistering brands’ confidence in in-app and driving repeat business.
Tech platforms are getting closer and closer to making sure that all audiences are addressable and that both performance and direct response advertisers are able to reach their whole addressable market. This will help prove the fact that in-app audiences are of equal value to other channels and could be a driving force behind increased investment and the success of in-app.
Brussels, 14 October 2021 - IAB Europe is dismayed by a new campaign and report, launched by the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament, that paint huge swathes of the internet economy as ‘manipulation’, and call for an outright ban on the use of personal data in advertising that would spell disaster for European media, start-ups and small businesses.
The campaign presents a misleading view that data-driven advertising, and personalised advertising in particular, is uniquely harmful and escapes user control.
It draws on a report that proposes to unequivocally outlaw the business practice, completely disregarding the full applicability of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to any business activity underpinned by personal data.
The paper blatantly ignores a universally accepted all-encompassing definition of ‘personal data’ under the GDPR, disingenuously putting forward a variation of ‘contextual advertising’ as a panacea to all challenges on the web, and as an alternative to data-driven advertising. But contextual ads still require the processing of ‘personal data’ to deliver and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns, and even the most informed account would admit they can only ever be one part of the mix for online publishers and advertisers.
The authors of the study claim that there exist ‘many opportunities for publishers and advertisers to survive, and even flourish, in a post personal data advertising world, despite having to navigate a complex transition’.
Yet those very same businesses – thousands of European digital media publishers, content creators, communications agencies, technology providers, eCommerce businesses, entrepreneurs, and software developers – have already firmly and collectively opposed a ban on targeted advertising, instead calling on the EU to simply recognise and enforce its already extensive legal framework for privacy and data protection.
At a time when EU legislators are negotiating in good faith to try to secure a compromise on the crucial Digital Services Act (DSA) package, this campaign can only be viewed as misleading and, indeed, manipulative. IAB Europe welcomes the prospect of the DSA boosting clarity and transparency around digital advertising, but we must remember just what it is that this legislation is scoped to do, and what impact assessments have been undertaken. At this late stage, introducing an untested and uncosted ban on one of the fundamental drivers of an open and innovative internet is a major distraction from the task at hand and would have simply immense unintended consequences for Europe’s free press, its small business ecosystem and its international reputation.
We call on all reasonable voices to reject this proposal and instead use the tools of enforcement already enshrined in the GDPR.
IAB Europe is inviting all advertisers and agencies to answer the 2021 In-Housing Survey! Take part here.
In-housing programmatic trading has gone from a nascent trend in recent years to a term that more and more brands and agencies are familiar with. But what is the current status of programmatic in-housing in Europe, and how will it evolve in the future?
If you're an advertiser or an agency, please help us to understand the current landscape by sharing your thoughts and experience of programmatic in-housing by completing this short survey.
The deadline to complete the survey has been extended to Friday 5th November, and it takes just 5 minutes to complete. Plus your response will be treated in the strictest confidence.
Help us uncover how programmatic in-housing is being adopted and what the future holds for this trend. Take the survey today!
On September 28, IAB Europe hosted the headline event of our Trust and Transparency series 'The Great Debate'.
The event was created to round up our exclusive September event series by discussing and debating all things trust and transparency in digital advertising.
Featuring a series of panel discussions, IAB Europe and IAB Europe member companies shared best practices and current initiatives and did a deep dive into the latest policy and legal regulations to drive trust and transparency in our industry. They shared their views on what’s being done and what else needs to be done.
In this post, you will find an overview of each of the sessions covered, as well as video recordings for you to view in your own time.
Watch the full event recording here.
Panel 1: Tackling Disinformation in the Industry
IAB Europe’s Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp, lead the conversation on what disinformation is, how it is grown, and what can be done by the industry to curb the spread. He was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 2: Tackling Brand Safety and Suitability for Emerging Channels – Gaming, CTV, and Audio
Following on from IAB Europe’s work around educating stakeholders on best practices for brand safety and suitability in emerging channels, this panel delved deeper with practical case studies and examples of what can be done to keep brands relevant and safe.
This panel was moderated by Tina Lakhani, Head of AdTech, IAB UK, who was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 3: Understanding the Digital Services Act (DSA)
A panel of industry association leaders from advertising and beyond discussed the latest status of the DSA, detailing what it means to them and the stakeholders they represent, including start-ups, SMEs, and Entrepreneurs.
This panel was moderated by Townsend Feehan, CEO, IAB Europe, who was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 4: Supply Chain Transparency
If the digital advertising industry is to increase investment from the buy-side and to continue to benefit consumers through personal, timely, and relevant content, then maintaining transparency is critical. This panel discussed the latest initiatives to help maintain such transparency.
This panel was moderated by Daniel Knapp, Cheif Economist, IAB Europe who was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Keynote: New Standards
Presentation by IAB Europe’s Technical Director, Alexandre Nderagakura, and Pierre Gauthier (IAB France Executive Committee member and Commercial Director at Channel Factory) on new standards to drive trust and transparency in our industry including the SCID initiative.
