France's antitrust watchdog on Thursday gave Facebook-owner Meta two months to change its access rules for ad verification partners, saying the company was potentially taking unfair advantage of a dominant market position in online advertising.
In a statement, the competition authority said Meta must
publish new access criteria for partners seeking to use its analytical tools to
assess whether online ad campaigns have been actually seen by people and are
not displayed in a way that could harm the reputation of the brand.
It said the new criteria must be transparent, objective,
non-discriminatory, and proportionate.
"We are reviewing the interim decision and considering
all our options," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Ad verification companies offer services including measuring
how many views online ads receive, detecting fraudulent online traffic, and
ensuring client ads do not appear on websites harming their brand, such as
pornographic sites.
The French body said Meta's invite-only approach allowed
access to its data to only the biggest operators and might be considered
discriminatory in the fields of the firm's "viewability" and
"brand safety" offerings.
The case was brought by Adloox, a small, independent French
ad verification company, which sought unsuccessfully to be granted access to
Meta's data for these services from 2016 to 2022.
Adloox complained to the competition authority last year,
and the authority found the barrier to entry created by Meta constituted an
"immediate and grave" harm to Adloox specifically, as well as to the
independent ad verification sector as a whole. © Reuters
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