Hi friends,

As we move into 2026, we are celebrating everything we’ve achieved together — with our community at the heart of it all.

2025 - the year we made adtech reform our business. Why? It's because our community has made it clear: the need for a transparent, safe, and fair digital economy has never been greater.

To our community: a heartfelt thank you ❤️ Your messages of support kept us moving forward, your tips informed our research, and your energy pushed our campaigns into the spotlight.

Thank you for standing with us as we work together to fix the internet.

We truly couldn’t do this without you.

Their business is our business, and we had comments.

We rallied for the stakeholders most impacted by the digital advertising ecosystem: publishers, advertisers, especially small businesses, and the public. Across the globe, we submitted responses to governmental consultations all year long to drive reform to protect these communities.

In 2025, we attended more than 10 workshops with EU lawmakers and their regulatory bodies. When the European Commission and European Data Protection Board opened comments on their GDPR DMA Joint Guidelines, we provided a detailed response about how to prevent monopolies from playing word games to further entrench their power.

Across the English Channel in the UK, we were busy too. We responded to the Competition and Market Authority’s invitation to comment regarding the Omnicom-IPG acquisition, explaining the harm that will likely result to the advertisers, publishers, and public in a market with fewer choices for brands, and less leverage for publishers. We also urged the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to take a detailed look at online advertising and the lack of regulations that permit intrusive data practices.

On the industry side of things, we weighed in and watched the watchers: We submitted comments to the Media Rating Council (MRC) regarding their proposed Digital Advertising Auction Transparency Standards. In our submission, we highlighted concerns about the MRC's conflicts of interest, as the standards set a lower bar for big tech. After supporting a bipartisan probe into how "certified" and "accredited" adtech companies failed to prevent ads from appearing on websites known to host Child Sexual Abuse Material, we submitted a complaint to Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) urging them to enforce their standards. For the first time, the industry itself was echoing our calls for "Know Your Customer" rules for adtech companies.

And that’s not all — we supported other like-minded civil society organizations, too. We submitted a paper to the Forum on Information Democracy to inform their upcoming policy brief.

With reform in mind, we made sure our voices were solutions-oriented in every room.

Reshaping the adtech business

This year, we proudly launched our first-ever policy platform — a roadmap to fixing the digital advertising system at its core. It includes five policy solutions that have been adapted from proven financial and consumer protection frameworks.

With the dream of a fair internet and stronger guardrails that protect all the internet’s stakeholders, we supported the AMERICA Act and California’s A.B. 566. We testified before state and federal lawmakers in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine in support of the strong state privacy laws that protect people and small businesses. We even saw our model adtech legislation, the Building Better Online Businesses (BBOB) Act, introduced in Vermont!

We supercharged our work with our partners. We worked with friends of fair ads like The Global Media Registry to publish IWA 44:2025, an initiative to bring clarity to media identification through a standardized Global Media Identifier (GMI), and signed on to letters with powerhouses like Demand Progress, AELP, CAAD, EPIC, and over 80 other groups. Our work with Luminate was even cited by the UK Parliament in their call out for change on the regulation of the digital advertising industry.

Minding Google’s Monopoly 

Following the landmark ruling that declared Google a monopoly, Check My Ads headed to Alexandria, VA, more than once to continue our coverage of the antitrust trial for the remedies phase. Reporting on USvGoogleAds.com, COO Arielle Garcia remained a reliable source of trial happenings for journalists, adtech reformers, watchdogs, policymakers, and consumers — everyone with a stake in the effects of the opacity of the industry.

And because of the coverage of the trial, Arielle won an Adweek Innovator award!

Business heard ‘round the globe

We made it our mission to take the conversation far and wide. This year, we sat on stages across the globe, from Brussels to Bonn, Montreal to London, and Washington, DC. — all to deliver the message.

Why is adtech so convoluted? How are these harms allowed? And most importantly, what can be done to fix it all?

Our voice called others to action, our community grew stronger, and we remained steadfast in our mission.

Our strategy has gone global

2025 was big, but we want to fill you in: 2026 is going to be even bigger. We're so proud to announce that we’re expanding our strategy in Europe, which has become one of the frontlines for the fight for privacy, information integrity, media pluralism, and democracy..

In less than two years, Adtech and Big Tech’s lobbying spend has increased in the EU by over 30%. We are SO ready to meet this demand, and advocate for the digital advertising ecosystem that is transparent, fair, and accountable on a global stage.

We've made some new key hires in Europe to keep the momentum going.

While our team is growing, the need for our community has never been stronger — hop on and hang on tight as we push for real change, for you, for me, and for the next generation. The next year is going to be a big one. Rest up this holiday season and prepare to hit the ground running with us in 2026!

From all of us at Check My Ads, we are wishing you a warm and cozy holiday season and a happy, healthy New Year.

 

With love,

The Check My Ads Team