These commitments will be supervised by an agent. They follow a referral filed in 2019 by Criteo.
No fine or recognition of an abuse of a dominant position, but commitments to restore healthy competitive conditions within the Meta group’s advertising ecosystem. Thus ends the referral filed in 2019 with the Competition Authority by the advertising retargeting company Criteo against the social media giant.
Criteo now has the ability to sue Meta for damages based on the Authority’s decision. But the advertising company says it is satisfied with the outcome of its case. “As part of the commitments met, Criteo will be reinstated as an authorized partner in France, restoring the company’s advertising buying capabilities on Facebook and Instagram“, notes the company in a press release.
“This is the first time that a competition authority has accepted commitments from Meta in the context of antitrust proceedings.“, underlines the institution. The latter, initially proposed last year by Meta, have been strongly reinforced by the Autorité in order to ensure their effectiveness. Their proper application will be monitored by a group of independent agents, whose names and remuneration conditions will have to be approved by the regulator. In the event of non-respect of its promises, Meta exposes itself to fines.
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Criteo had filed a complaint after being excluded from the Facebook Marketing Partner program, a label of trust with advertisers, which also improves the quality of service offered. He had also lost access to a Meta programming interface (API), and felt that the American group’s commercial services were denigrating him to his customers.
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Worrying practices
The Competition Authority has identified practices “likely to give rise to competition concernsin how Meta handled the Criteo case. The withdrawal of its Facebook Marketing Partner label and access to the API was done without clear and transparent criteria, and with “a lack of objectivity“.
Knowing that Meta offers retargeting advertising services similar to those of Criteo, one could fear that the American group would exclude competitors at its discretion to better impose itself on advertisers. “The message here is that large platforms can expand their ecosystem of services, but not at the cost of crowding out the competition.“, deciphers Henri Piffaut, vice-president of the Authority.
The commitments negotiated between Meta and the Autorité de la concurrence aim to correct these problems by reinjecting objectivity into the practices of the social network with criteria “transparent, predictable and non-discriminatoryin obtaining the Facebook Marketing Partner label (renamed Meta Business Partner) and access to its API. In addition, the American group undertakes to automatically reinstate service providers who had had access to its API and had been ousted.
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