With a global turnover of approximately $US600 billion in 2023, the digital advertising market is an essential revenue stream for digital platforms. However, the wholesale deregulation of digital ads in most parts of the world has come at a cost. For example, digital platforms’ opaque environments–where ads target users algorithmically according to their personal data–have allowed the development of a global, scalable and profit-oriented “influence industry” based on leveraging user behavior for profit.
Furthermore, despite evidence of an online ecosystem of suspicious, inauthentic, scams, and other types of fraudulent ads in different countries, regulatory proposals have faced hard opposition from big tech companies and while some platforms offer transparency measures for digital advertising, there remain significant gaps between countries.
The main objective of this policy brief is to recommend transparency mechanisms, parameters and means of accessing data from digital platforms, which are transferable across global and local contexts. Our recommendations are based on a comparative analysis of the major platforms’ public documentation and terms of use combined with empirical case studies from four different world regions: Brazil, USA, Ireland and Thailand.
Our research finds that implementing transparency policies in only a few countries can cause an imbalance in growth opportunities between regions and is inefficient. Therefore, ads need to be transparent, auditable, and respect local laws to ensure three types of freedom: (i) free market competition, (ii) national sovereignty, and (iii) the freedom of choice for consumers and citizens.
Enhanced transparency of advertising networks is an essential imperative of platform regulatory frameworks around the globe, and it hinges on implementing navigable and searchable repositories for all advertisements circulating on digital platforms
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