No stone left unturned: US regulators put their foot on the gas pedal in 2022 when it came to pressuring the digital advertising industry, and its scope extends beyond influencer marketing.
- In September, the FTC sued ad tech firm Kochava for data privacy actions that many in the industry considered to be common practice. Those suits have also opened a dam of private lawsuits against digital advertising agencies.
- The Interactive Advertising Bureau named heightened regulator interest in advertising the biggest threat to advertising signal loss—higher than the removal of third-party cookies and tracking changes on iOS.
Our take: Google and iHeartRadio’s misstep is a sign that US regulators are trying to rectify a lack of advertising standards and enforcement . But those changes are coming at a troubled time for the digital ad world, which will have to adapt to new standards quickly to make it out of the ad spend downturn unscathed.
- This isn’t iHeartMedia’s only ad scandal this year, either. It and other podcasting companies purchased users via in-game ads to inflate their listener figures by millions, according to a Bloomberg investigation—calling their CPM rates into question.