[Draft] iamai submission to Committee on Digital Competition Law

No exemption available for user consent: As noted above, the Report disallows the SIDI from processing personal data for advertising purposes, even if consent has been taken from the user. This position overrides the autonomy of data subjects. In fact, it presents a much stricter stance than adopted in other jurisdictions like the DMA.²²

Data sharing with advertisers: The Report also recommends (a) providing advertisers with information on the price paid and the remuneration received by publishers, and (b) providing advertisers and publishers with access to performance measuring tools and data necessary to carry out independent verification of advertisement inventory. The Report however fails to provide the reasons for disclosing publisher remuneration to the advertiser. These recommendations are identical to the obligations set out in the DMA. However, while the DMA allows publishers to refuse to give consent to sharing of remuneration data, the Report does not make a similar recommendation.

The Report does not consider that the “necessary data” that entities and platforms will have to share with advertisers and publishers may include trade secrets and proprietary information. No carve-outs have been recommended in the Report which will seriously undermine business and commercial operations of entities designated as SIDIs.

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  Failure to consider the market conditions in India: By recommending obligations that are identical to the DMA, the Report does not consider the different market dynamics at play in Europe and in India. Television ad spend has been significantly higher than digital ad spends in India until 2021.²³ In Europe, television ad spend was about one-third of digital ad spend in 2021²⁴ and is likely to drop further in the coming years. Further, the digital advertising spend in Europe is over 30 times the size of such spends in India. Digital ad spend in Europe was around EUR 92 billion²⁵ in 2021, whereas it was only about INR 246 billion²⁶ (~ EUR 2.8 billion) in India.
  

The Report also does not consider that the digital advertising space has evolved significantly in the last decade. With digital advertising burgeoning along with ads on other medium such as television and print, users have far greater choice in terms of advertising media.