- How EXADS is keeping your business compliant with EU Law
- What does it mean?
- What does this mean for Publishers?
- What does this mean for Advertisers?
- What does this mean for Ad Networks using EXADS as their ad serving technology
- How will this work?
- What EXADS’ Ad Serving Clients should do
- Benefits to EXADS Ad Serving Clients
- More about Compliance
How EXADS is keeping your business compliant with EU Law
On Saturday 17 February 2024, the European Union’s Digital Services Act comes into force for all Online Platforms. For Ad Networks, Mobile apps, Advertisers and Publishers, this relates specifically to Article 26 – Online advertising transparency. The purpose of this law is to facilitate EU end users to be able to identify the Advertiser behind every ad that is shown on a website or within an app. For this purpose, the information will be extracted from data provided by your Advertisers in their admin panels.
What does it mean?
All Online Platforms must comply with allowing the end user to know more about the advertisement they are seeing. This involves the following mandatory items:
- that the information displayed is an advertisement;
- the natural or legal person on whose behalf the advertisement is displayed;
- meaningful information about the main parameters used to determine the recipient to whom the advertisement is displayed.
Therefore in accordance with the DSA, EXADS will display such information about the ad irrespective of where the Online Platforms or Advertisers are based geographically.
What does this mean for Publishers?
All ad zones displayed in the EU must allow end users to have a clickable option to check why they are seeing the ad and who is the advertiser of the ad being displayed in the Publisher's ad zone.
What does this mean for Advertisers?
For each online advertising platform that Advertisers use to show ads to end users in the EU, Advertisers must provide the platform with factual data about themselves, and for this purpose, the information will be extracted from the data provided by the Advertiser to the Ad Network or Publisher ad server. This information will then be displayed within the Publisher’s ad zone where the ad appears.
What does this mean for Ad Networks using EXADS as their ad serving technology?
Therefore in accordance with EU law, EXADS’ platform has a new DSA Compliance feature that enables your Publisher clients to display information concerning the advertised product, service, or website, as well as details about the individual or entity responsible for and funding the ad within the European Union. In order to enable the DSA toggle switch on your Publisher clients’ ad zones, please contact your Customer Success manager at EXADS.
How will this work?
A small clickable ‘i’ information icon will display overlaid on the top left corner of the ad.
Once the end user clicks on the icon, a display box appears over the ad showing a clickable ‘About This Ad’ button. At this stage the EU end user can click a back button to return to the ad or can continue to see more about the ad, by clicking ‘About This Ad.’
On clicking ‘About This Ad’ a new webpage will open. The webpage displays two sections of information:
- ‘Why you’re seeing this ad’
- ‘About this Advertiser’
The end user can then close the webpage and their screen will show them the website they were browsing and the ad will appear blank as shown below.
The end user will then be able to click the arrow on the top left corner of the ad and the ad will be displayed once again.
What EXADS’ Ad Serving Clients should do
Now you should inform your clients of the following:
- What your Publishers should do - In their Admin Panel under ‘Sites and Zones’ they will see a toggle switch called ‘Enable Ad Transparency Dialog’ on each of their ad zones, this will be toggled ON by default. If they hover over the toggle switch they will see the text displayed: Enabling this will make ads DSA compliant.
- What your Advertisers should do - To comply, each Advertiser should go to the Profile section of their Admin Panel and update the Profile with the following factual information:
- Company name
- First name
- Last name
Please note: That the data the Advertiser provides for their account is used for invoice generation, and the accuracy of the account data is important for invoice generation for their tax purposes. As an Advertiser it is their sole responsibility to provide true factual profile information.
Benefits to EXADS Ad Serving Clients
EXADS has ensured that you are fully compliant with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
Benefits to Publishers
As long as the toggle switch labeled ‘Enable Ad Transparency Dialog’ is set to ON on each of their ad zones, the ads then being served are fully compliant with EU law.
The end user experience on the Publisher website is improved, because of the full transparency about the ads being displayed.
Benefits to your Advertiser Clients
All campaign ads that are running or to be created will now display the Advertiser's company name taken from the Advertiser’s account’s profile. All ads will be fully compliant with EU law.
As the end user has the option to see the name of the Advertiser, this ensures that end users can see the ad is from a trusted source.
Because the ads will state they are ads on any website’s ad zone that the Advertiser wins, this will bring only qualified clicks, because the end user is aware they will be clicking on an ad they are interested in.
If you require further information please contact your Customer Success Manager.
More about Compliance
If you want to learn more about how to ensure your ad network or ad serving business is industry compliant check out our blog posts Why You Need Compliance and How to ensure you serve IAB Standard quality ads.