The Competition Authority announced on Thursday that it had issued interim measures against Meta, Facebook’s parent company, which the institution accuses of serious flaws in the advertising verification sector, which could lead to a abuse of dominant position.
Last October, the French Competition Authority was seized by the company Adloox, which criticized the American giant Meta for its practices in the advertising verification sector on the Internet. The institution, following its investigation, decided to force the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain criteria that are both ” objective, transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate on some of the aspects of this advertising verification market. Let’s get into the heart of the matter a little more, to understand what exactly we are talking about.
Advertising verification, a complex sector, but necessary for advertisers
First, what is ad verification? The Competition Authority explains to us that it designates ” the procedures for controlling, in the world of online advertising, the quality of an inventory or an advertising impression “. This advertising verification has three objectives, all intended to strengthen the quality of the ads served online.
- The first objective is that of measuring visibility, called viewability in English, which makes it possible to verify that an advertisement has indeed been seen by the Internet user. Some ads, if positioned too far down a page, cannot always be converted into an “impression” or view.
- The second objective is to detect fraud. Here, we are targeting invalid traffic that could come from robots or other machines.
- Finally, this verification pursues the objective of brand safety, or brand safety. There, the advertisement should not be displayed in an environment that may harm the interests and values of the brand. THE brand suitability goes even further, with an environment that must squarely correspond to the values of the brand.
Having said that, you should know that this type of advertising verification service can be offered by an integrated advertising platform. Meta has his own, for example. It can also be offered by a specialized independent operator, which generally has the advantage of providing even more precise measurements than the distribution platform. Adloox is one of the French actors.
Meta has two months to meet the requirements of the Competition Authority
Between 2016 and 2022, Adloox asked the Meta Group, either directly or through its customers, to have access to the ecosystem in the same way as some of its competitors (DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Oracle MOAT or Zefr) to provide its independent advertising verification services. The French company believed that the Californian firm was refusing it this access to partnerships viewability And brand safety in a discriminatory manner, and engaged in an abuse of a dominant position, ” by imposing unfair access conditions by only giving partial access to its ecosystem “, explains the Competition Authority.
The Autorité de la concurrence considered, after investigation, that Meta was very likely to hold a dominant position on the French online advertising market in general. The authority has pointed out several practices in this direction:
- Meta did not initially define criteria for accessing and maintaining partnerships viewability And brand safety which are transparent, non-discriminatory, objective and proportionate. Admittedly, the company has communicated new eligibility criteria, but these have not been made public and are only implemented by invitation.
- For the authority, the refusal of access to partnerships is likely to be qualified as discriminatory against Adloox. The exchanges between the two actors seem to reveal that Meta never intended to integrate the French service.
- The authority also pointed the finger at an attack ” serious and immediate to the independent advertising verification industry “. Given the colossal investment of advertisers in Meta inventory, the US giant is a key player for independent advertising verifiers. Introducing barriers to entry is therefore not allowed, and Adloox suffers the consequences on its growth and its customer portfolio.
In view of the shortcomings noted, and with the prospect of the Digital Markets Act, which will require advertising platforms to provide free access to the data necessary for the independent advertising verification of their inventories, the Autorité de la concurrence has ordered Meta to suspend the criteria set up in January 2023. But that’s not all, since it asks him to make public, within two months, the new criteria for accessing and maintaining partnerships. Meta must also provide the authority with regular reports on the methods of implementing these injunctions.
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