To avoid further UK antitrust issues, Meta will limit how it uses ad data to power Facebook Marketplace

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Facebook parent Meta has provided key assurances to UK antitrust regulators as it seeks to counter concerns about how it uses advertising data to benefit its own products.

The news comes in the same week that Meta revealed was selling the GIF platform Giphy for $53 million three years later buy it for $400 millionfollowing a final divestment order issued by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last october. The CMA also recently blocked Microsoft’s $68.7 billion offer for Activision.

At the heart of this specific issue is how Meta can leverage data from its core social network to make recommendation and display decisions for content on Facebook Marketplace, an online classifieds ad service. released in 2016 that allows Facebook users to buy and sell almost anything. Since Meta can obtain information about users’ interests through their interactions with online advertisements on Facebook, the CMA He argues that this gives Meta an unfair advantage by allowing it to display more relevant items in its users’ Marketplace feed, to the detriment of advertisers elsewhere on the platform.

The European Commission (EC) and the CMA announced separate but collaborative efforts to investigate Meta about this practice in June 2021, with the CMA revealing in August that he was conducting a formal investigation. the EC did the same four months later.

Now, however, the CMA has given its first indication that it is prepared to drop the case after receiving specific commitments from the Meta.

These include allowing advertisers to opt out of having their ad data used to develop Facebook Marketplace, which Meta said it will do by implementing “new technical systems.” On top of that, Meta said it will train staff to make sure they don’t use advertisers’ data when developing new products for use in the UK market that can compete with advertisers.

‘Reducing risk’

While the CMA has yet to explicitly agree to these commitments, it has more or less said that it will, and that if it is eventually given the green light, an oversight trustee will be appointed to ensure that Meta lives up to its commitments.

“Reducing the risk of Meta unfairly exploiting the data of companies that advertise on its platform for its own competitive advantage could help many UK companies that advertise there,” said CMA chief compliance officer Michael Grenfell. . wrote in a report published today. “We are now consulting on these commitments which we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns.”

This latest announcement begins a one-month consultation period that will close on June 26. If their provisional findings are confirmed, this will bring the investigation to an end.