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Hi friends,
It's Sarah Kay Wiley, Policy Director here, giving you an update on how we’ve been holding a trillion-dollar, global, largely unregulated market accountable. A lot has happened on the international stage over the past month that I'm excited to share with you.
Fewer Agencies, Bigger Problems
Two advertising giants, Omnicom and IPG, are planning to merge, creating the world's largest ad agency and leaving just three major players controlling much of the market. This raises serious concerns for advertisers and publishers around the world. Fewer agencies means less choice, higher costs, less transparency, and lower quality for brands. The new mega-agency could demand lower prices through bigger opaque discounts and incentives. This will especially hurt smaller publishers, who either can't compete, or get even less of every ad dollar - and that means less money to fund quality content. In short, it's a lose-lose situation for our media ecosystem.
Thankfully, regulators around the world are taking notice of the potential harms this merger could impose. The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority and Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission requested comments from the public, and we answered, urging them to carefully review the deal to protect competition, transparency, and the health of the advertising ecosystem.
You can read our submission to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority here and to Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission here.
Another landmark decision, let’s see what comes next!
On May 14, 2025, the Belgian Market Court (part of the Brussels Court of Appeal) delivered a significant ruling that pushes the digital ad industry towards more accountability. The court ruled that the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), created by IAB Europe (an industry trade group) and used by ad giants such as Google, Amazon, X, and Microsoft to obtain user consent to be targeted with advertisements online, infringed the European Union’s comprehensive privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
While the court annulled the 2022 decision by the Belgian Data Protection Authority (APD) on procedural grounds, it upheld key substantive findings. Specifically, it confirmed that the TCF's “TC Strings,” which record user consent preferences, constitute personal data under the GDPR. The court determined that IAB Europe acts as a joint data controller solely concerning the creation and use of these TC Strings, but not for subsequent data processing activities carried out by TCF participants, such as personalized advertising.
In simple terms, the ruling means that parts of the online advertising system—specifically the way companies ask for and record your permission to collect data—don’t fully comply with Europe’s privacy laws. And, it means that industry bodies can't shrug their shoulders and evade accountability for the standards they create. The takeaway? The system needs to be more transparent, more accountable, and stop undermining people's right to meaningful choice over how their data is used. This decision pushes the digital advertising industry to do a better job respecting your privacy online.
Check My Ads joined a broad coalition led by Fairplay and EPIC to launch a campaign to stop Google’s rollout of the Gemini AI companion to young children. The campaign includes a request for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google for violating children’s online privacy law, and a letter to Google urging the company to halt the rollout.
There is no evidence that AI chatbots like Gemini are safe for children, and the risks these chatbots pose are substantial. The letters to the FTC and Google detail how young children are especially vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation from AI systems like Gemini.
This month, we’ll be unveiling Check My Ads Institute’s Policy Platform. It’s a bold roadmap to fix the broken digital advertising industry and I can’t wait to share it with you. Our platform outlines five urgent solutions to restore integrity, fairness, and accountability to this system, borrowing proven principles from financial and consumer protection law. From structural separation and due diligence standards to log-level transparency and privacy-respecting advertising practices, this is a call to action for regulators, advertisers, and civil society to stand up for a healthier digital economy.
🔦 Our COO, Arielle Garcia, testified before the Honourable Members of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield. She highlighted that of the €600 billion global digital advertising market, €119 billion of it is concentrated in Europe, and is structurally broken and poses a threat to democracy. Arielle explained that the system operates like an unregulated financial market, with opaque money flows and personal data exploitation.
The market must be restored. Thankfully, this is fixable, and we know how to do it. Arielle has called for restoring competition during the transaction process, adtech vendors vetting who they support, and strengthening legislation such as GDPR and DSA.
“For democracy to thrive in the digital age, we must bring transparency and accountability to the systems that support it.”
🎧 Google says it's all about privacy, but Arielle Garcia has receipts to prove that’s not true. Arielle chats with Jake Surrey of The Skeptical Marketer to prove it’s rigged.
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