Further regulatory issues For Meta: France’s competition watchdog has announced provisional measures on the ad-tech giant, saying it suspects it is abusing a dominant position in the French social media ad market and across the entire advertising market. online ads (not related to search) broader.

You are directing Meta to suspend the application of the current criteria it imposes for granting ad verification partnerships; and giving it two months to define and publish new rules for accessing and maintaining brand safety and visibility associations that the Authority specifies must be “objective, transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate.”

Meta should also have a transparent access procedure for associations that is not based on an invitation it sends, it also stipulates the order.

The antitrust intervention follows a complaint by Adloox, a French ad-verification platform that sells anti-fraud and brand safety services. complained to Authority of Concurrence about Meta’s conduct between 2016 and 2022, accusing the company of denying it the same type of access to its ecosystem that some of its competitors have been granted, impairing its ability to provide its services.

Adloox claims that Meta discriminatoryly denied it access to the aforementioned brand safety and visibility associations, despite providing such access to other companies in similar circumstances.

It also accuses Meta of abusing a dominant position by imposing unfair access conditions by providing only partial access to its ecosystem. And her complaint asked the Authorization to impose precautionary measures intended to compel Meta to provide the access sought.

The French regulator, which has taken a preliminary view that Meta’s practices are likely to breach competition rules, notes in a Press release that Adloox’s last request to Meta, in August 2022, went unanswered.

“The Authority considers that Meta’s practices are likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position,” the regulator writes in a statement (translated from French via machine translation). “In the light of the investigation, the Authority considered that Meta is likely to have a dominant position in the French market for online advertising on social networks, as well as in the broader market for online advertising not linked to search. Given the importance of the advertising investments made on the Meta platform, Meta is perceived as a key partner for independent auditors.”

The Meta practices that the regulator points out as likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position are 1): The lack of defined and transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate objective criteria to access and maintain brand visibility and safety associations, with the authority saying the company onboarded its current partners “following an opaque procedure initiated only by Meta.” And while he notes that Meta informed him of the new eligibility criteria for associations earlier this year, he notes that they are not yet public, nor do they appear to approve in other respects, with the regulator noting that they are still intended to be implemented as part of an invitation system (i.e. opaque) and suggesting that they seem “both disproportionate and unjustified”.

Second, the authority says that Meta’s denial of association access to Adloox is likely to be discriminatory, given its assessment that the third party is in an equivalent situation to others to which Meta has granted access.

The regulator says it is acting under the French Commercial Code, which empowers it to impose “injunctive relief” when it considers that the practices are causing serious and immediate damage “to the economy in general, to the economy of the sector in question, to the interests of consumers or, where appropriate, to the complainant company”.

In this case, it adds that it suspects that Meta’s practices have caused “serious and immediate damage to the independent advertising verification sector by freezing the oligopolistic structure of the market.”

“(The) access to the Meta ecosystem is crucial for independent ad testers, given the massive investment by advertisers in their inventory, but also the growing demand from their clients for a single offer that covers all online advertising channels. ”, he points out. “By creating artificial barriers to entry and expansion, such practices significantly hamper the development of the ad verification industry and incentives to innovate.”

He authority He goes on to say that he takes an even more serious view of Meta’s practices given that they are taking place in a context where the market for independent ad verification will soon open up, such as the European Union Digital Market Law (DMA) begins to regulate the gatekeepers of the Internet in the coming months.

Meta has yet to be designated as a gatekeeper under the WFD, as the Commission has until early September to decide which core platform services fall under the regime. However, the ad-tech giant is expected to face regulation as a gatekeeper. And while it remains to be seen exactly which of its services will make the cut, it seems highly likely that Meta’s ad platform will be designated as a core platform service under the DMA, which will require it to meet a fixed set of operational obligations aimed at ensuring fair and open treatment.

The French watchdog also points out that the DMA will establish obligations on “the main advertising platforms” to provide free access to the data necessary for the independent verification of their inventories. So the steps it is taking now, following the Adloox complaint, seem to offer a taste of what pan-European regulation will soon require of platform giants like Meta, but the difference will be that it will be required up front, rather than months (or years). ) after reports of abusive behavior.

He authority suggests that Meta has caused “serious and immediate damage” to Adloox’s interests, by preventing it from providing its verification services on its platform, accusing it of depriving the third party of a major growth engine and likely causing it to lose customers.

“It should also be noted that Adloox’s business has decreased significantly since 2017, coinciding with Meta’s refusal to integrate it into its ecosystem, while its integrated competitors’ business has grown significantly. Therefore, the denial of access to Adloox could lead, before the end of an investigation on the merits, to its expulsion from the advertising verification market ”, he adds.

Meta was contacted for comment.