This week's review of ad fraud and privacy in the digital advertising space.
French data protection authority CNIL decided that Google Analytics is breaching Article 44 of the GDPR, covering personal data transfers outside the European Union to countries "which are not considered to have essentially equivalent privacy protections. The U.S. fails this critical equivalence test on account of having sweeping surveillance laws which do not provide non-U.S. citizens with any way to know whether their data is being acquired, how it’s being used or to seek redress for any misuse," informs TechCrunch.
Privacy issues over transferring European user data to the U.S. concern another Big Tech corporation. Meta said in its latest annual report that it is considering shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if the company is unable to transfer user data to the U.S. "A Meta spokesperson told CNBC on Monday that the company has no desire and no plans to withdraw from Europe, adding it has raised the same concerns in previous filings," informs CNBC.
The IAB Tech Lab introduced a new working group to develop and implement privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). "PETs rely on data-masking techniques that protect and minimize sensitive information within data sets so they can still be used but without compromising privacy. Classic examples include differential privacy, on-device learning and processing, secure multiparty computation and various forms of cryptography," according to AdExchanger.
After dominating digital advertising, the big three are coming for the whole advertising industry. Google, Meta, and Amazon "together ... accounted for more than $7 in $10 (74%) of global digital ad spending last year, which is 47% of all money spent on advertising over that period. That put them on track to reach a dominant share of the entire advertising market this year," according to Digiday.
The new W3C Private Advertising Technology Group met for the first time this week. "One important new item on the agenda is called Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), a joint proposal by Mozilla and Meta engineers," reported AdExchanger. "If adopted, it would improve cross-device or cross-browser attribution tracking without tripping any of Apple or browser-based privacy policies."
