Efforts by tech giants to be more transparent about the ads they serve are — at best — still a work in progress, according to a report examining ad transparency tools. The report comes about six months after the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) rules came into force for large platforms, requiring companies to offer a searchable library of public announcements. Companies include: Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok and X.
In some cases, including (but not limited to) Mozilla free software. in collaboration with CheckFirst, a disinformation research company based in Finland.
The report’s main finding is that the platforms’ advertising monitoring tools are failing to provide the expected transparency and democratic accountability during a critical year for elections globally.
“We see huge variations between platforms, but one thing is true for all: none is a fully functional advertising repository and none will provide researchers and citizens civil society groups with the tools and data they need to effectively monitor the impact of VLOs (very large online platforms and search engines) on the upcoming European elections,” write the authors of the report, citing AliExpress and X as the worst examples of these tech giants who TO DO provide an ad library (Amazon has avoided providing one thus far), before adding a line that offers faint praise: “(W)We’re hard-pressed to tell you which one is better.
The lack of critical data and effective tools to study the platforms means that independent researchers still face huge obstacles when it comes to producing data-driven insights into the impacts of Big Tech. Without robust public interest research, how can the world’s richest companies be held accountable for business models that often rely on increasing user engagement to generate more ad views?
Just think about the discussion around social media use and adolescent mental health, as an example. Ad transparency tools that allow external researchers to study the types of paid messages targeting young people on different platforms could help shed light on any problematic dynamics and platform incentives. But adtech giants obviously don’t make this type of research easy.
However, the simple fact of The fact that 11 of the world’s largest technology companies provide advertising benchmarks – most doing so as a direct result of European regulations – is “in itself” a fundamental form of progress, according to the research authors. Even if, according to them, none of the tools they offer yet allow researchers to do it correctly.
The pan-European DSA provides for penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover for non-compliance. So enforcing the rules for poor performance could result in hefty fines in the long run. But despite this increased regulatory risk, the report suggests that tech giants aren’t exactly rushing to shine the spotlight on targeted messaging that funnels direct revenue into their coffers.
Compliance Theater
Indeed, no platform has received the “ready for action” green light from Mozilla and CheckFirst. Meta, which has operated an ad library the longest, has one of the most mature offerings, they say, but its ad library still has “large gaps in data and functionality,” according to the report. Likewise, Apple, LinkedIn, and TikTok all have similar flaws. Alphabet (Google), Booking.com and Pinterest are rated as offering an even worse “bare minimum”.
Alongside the aforementioned “total disappointment” with AliExpress and
Compliance theater is a concept familiar to EU privacy observers when it comes to designing consent flows to collect permission from web users to track and profile their online activity at micro-targeted advertising purposes. Judging by the report’s findings, something similar could be happening in platforms’ initial responses to DSA’s requests for ad transparency. Many seem to realize how much they can’t get away with, perhaps in a bid to test how the Commission, which oversees compliance with the rules, responds; or simply because they prefer to devote more of their resources to revenue generation rather than legal compliance.
A dozen tech giants with very large platforms and/or search engines, which the report calls VLO, face the strictest level of DSA regulation, including a requirement to publish an ad library . Mozilla and CheckFirst tested ad libraries associated with the following e-commerce, social media and marketplace platforms between December 2023 and January 2024: AliExpress, Alphabet (Google Search and YouTube), Apple App Store, Bing, Booking.com, LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Pinterest, SnapChat, TikTok,
“We look at factors such as the depth of information provided about the ad and its advertiser, the targeting criteria used and the reach of the ad. Additionally, we evaluate the completeness of the advertising repository, the availability of historical data as well as the accessibility, consistency and documentation of the tools provided,” the authors wrote, also noting that most (but not all) platforms provide a separate website. an API and API-based advertising repository; they therefore evaluated these distinct implementations individually.
“Major gaps”
They note that some developments have occurred since they conducted their testing of transparency tools. The study is therefore only a snapshot of the situation approximately six months after the VLO compliance deadline, at the end of August.
They also did not evaluate some deeper elements, such as the accuracy of the information provided by the platforms, i.e. about who pays for the advertisements. Influencer or branded content is also not evaluated. But testing allows for analysis of the pace of progress since compliance day, as well as basic comparisons between offerings and platform gaps.
Among several key findings in the report are concerns related to accuracy issues and missing data. “OOur accuracy testing revealed many cases where ads in the UI were not found in the ad repository,” they note, adding: “This may limit the usefulness and reliability of the repositories as a transparency tool. »
“We believe that there are significant gaps between the spirit of European regulations and the practice of these standards, intended to “facilitate control and research into emerging risks induced by the distribution of online advertising,” conclude the authors. of the report, emphasizing that in the case of only provides a CSV file to download, which they also found “curiously slow”. (They argue that this type of historical access is “only useful if you already know everything about the ad you’re seeking,” which suggests that X, under the leadership of controversial billionaire owner Elon Musk, is essentially trying to put a end to independent research, even though it claims to respect the law.)
The social network formerly known as Twitter was the first platform to be formally investigated by the EU for alleged violations of the DSA, notably in the area of data access for researchers. This investigation, opened in December, continues. But if DSA violations are confirmed, X is first in line to receive a hefty fine.
Also underscoring how platforms oppose the EU’s transparency mandate, at the time of writing Amazon did not offer an ad library at all – after being granted a temporary exemption from this requirement by a court of the EU last fall.
A higher court later overturned that decision, late last month, so the e-commerce giant will finally have to put its promotional laundry on the line for an external perusal. But, as the report suggests, it is all too easy for platforms to intentionally inject friction into transparency tools, whether through restrictive design or sloppy implementation, or both. This undermines researchers’ ability to interrogate technosocial impacts and advertising-driven business models, making finding, sorting, and filtering data about the ads they have monetized far more difficult than they need to be. be.
The report contains a series of recommendations aimed at driving transparency on platforms, including design changes that tech giants could implement, such as making ad libraries public without requiring a login; allow unrestricted browsing; and offering enhanced search features such as support for searches by keyword, advertiser, country and date range and allowing filtering and ordering of results, to name just a few of the suggested changes.
They also suggest measures for law enforcement authorities, such as developing ad transparency guidelines that set minimum standards for what platforms must provide in web repositories and API; and require the use of standardized APIs for search access to improve usability and enable cross-platform search.
techcrunch
