PARIS (Reuters) – The Autorité de la concurrence announced on Thursday that it was issuing interim measures against Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, saying it feared an abuse of a dominant position in the advertising verification market.
The regulator considers that the conditions for accessing Meta’s partnerships in advertising verification are not “transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate”.
The antitrust authority ordered Meta Platforms to suspend the application of the access criteria set up last January and to define new ones within two months to guarantee competition in this market.
Companies specializing in advertising verification, such as the French company Adloox, at the origin of the referral to the regulator, offer services for measuring the visibility of advertisements, fraud detection and brand security.
Meta has developed two partnerships in advertising verification and access to these partnerships is by prior invitation only.
Between 2016 and 2022, Adloox sought to gain access to these partnerships but still succeeded.
“The Autorité considered that the conditions of access to Meta’s ‘viewability’ and ‘brand safety’ partnerships were likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position and seriously harm both the interests of Adloox and the independent advertising verification”, indicates the regulator, who will later render a decision on the merits of the case.
Meta said it is reviewing this tentative decision and considering all of its options.
(Report America Hernandez and Mathieu Rosemain, Matthieu Protard)
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