Big tech is under pressure to fix the broken digital advertising industry

Digital advertising is a huge $700 billion (£530 billion) industry that remains largely unregulated, with few laws protecting brands and consumers.Companies and brands often don’t know which sites are showing their ads At My Ads, the ad technology watchdog, we constantly deal with situations where advertisers and citizens have been lied to. a victim of fraud and manipulation We have removed advertising from serious sites misinformation about COVID-19, false election contentand even AI generated obituaries.

Currently, if a brand wants to advertise a product, Google makes it easy to place ads based on the desired ad reach and metrics. ad views may have appeared on sites that are diametrically opposed to brand values.For example, in 2024, Google was found to be making a profit by placing product ads on sites that promote heavy pornography, misinformation and even hate speech against the wishes of brands.

In 2025, however, this scandal will end as we begin to adopt the first regulations targeting the digital advertising industry. Around the world, lawmakers in Brussels, Ottawa, Washington and London are already in the early stages of developing regulations that will allow brands to access legal support to ask questions, verify ad data and receive automatic compensation when they find their digital campaigns have been subject to fraud or security breaches.

In Canada, for example, Parliament is considering passing the Online Harms Act, a law that encourages the removal of sexual content involving minors. The idea behind this law is that if the content is illegal, it should be illegal to make money from it.

Advocates in California and New York are also proposing legislation aimed at implementing a “know-your-customer” law to go after the global ad finance trade companies than any other city in the world.On the other hand, California’s transparency laws will affect Google’s international ad business, the world’s largest ad tech company. is the company.

In addition to brand and consumer issues, the unregulated nature of the digital advertising landscape is a direct threat to democracy. In the US, for example, presidential campaign spending remains effectively unregulated. Presidential campaigns are expected to spend up to $2 billion (£1.5 billion) in 2024. sterling) on ​​digital advertising.Under current laws, we may not have external data on their returns or rates.

In 2025, the legislative pressure is on big tech companies to regulate ad tech.