What is the European Union’s Digital Services Act?
Ad compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act. On Saturday 17 February 2024, the European Union’s Digital Services Act came 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 the Advertiser to ExoClick.
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, ExoClick will display such information about the ad irrespective of where the Online Platforms or Advertisers are based geographically. This is the requirement of ad compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
How will this work with ExoClick?
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 EU 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 EU 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 Advertisers should do
Campaigns will not be accepted on ExoClick’s network if you do not provide the correct information. To comply, all you need to do is enter your Admin Panel and update your ExoClick profile with the following factually correct information:
– Company name
– First name
– Last name
Please note: Advertiser accounts that do not have accurate company, first name & last name data, will not be able to run campaigns on ExoClick. The data you provide for your account is used for invoice generation, and the accuracy of the account data is important for invoice generation for your tax purposes. As an Advertiser it is your sole responsibility to provide true factual profile information. We recommend that you do this immediately.
What Publishers should do
How do I ensure my website’s ads are DSA compliant? In your Admin Panel under ‘Sites and Zones’ you will see a toggle switch called ‘Enable Ad Transparency Dialog’ on each of your ad zones, this will be toggled ON by default. If you hover over the toggle switch you will see the text displayed: Enabling this will ensure ad compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act
You can find more details on our dedicated DSA webpage and if you require further information please contact your account manager or our Customer Success Team here.
