Regulation will be the main challenge for digital advertisers in 2019, says GlobalData

The main challenge that advertisers will face in the coming year is tighter regulation of the digital advertising market, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The company’s latest thematic research report, ‘Advertising Sector Scorecard’, states that data privacy, data protection, fake news, copyright, and tax avoidance are areas that regulators across the world are likely to target over the next 12 months.

In the report GlobalData’s Thematic Research Team sets out the big themes that will impact the global advertising sector, predicts how they will evolve over the coming year and identifies which advertising companies are best placed to prosper in 2019 and beyond.

Cyrus Mewawalla, Head of Thematic Research at GlobalData, commented: “At the heart of the regulatory debate is the question of whether the big tech giants – like Google, Facebook, and others – should retain their legal status as neutral content aggregation platforms (which are not subject to heavy regulation) or be re-classified as publishers (which are).“

Effective tax rates for some of the larger tech giants in the digital advertising space may also rise as governments all over the world mull over the concept of taxing local revenues rather than local profits.

Mewawalla concludes: “While big tech companies are better equipped and more diversified to navigate these uncertain times, their compliance costs are almost certain to rise. For example, they may be required to build more local data centres.”

Source: GlobalData