DEEPDIVE

2025 no doubt will see even more data regulatory changes implicating the advertising ecosystem & to kick things off, the ICO have launched a couple of fairly important posts / articles around what their intentions are for the UK. In particular, a blog post released on the 23rd January showcases a wide range of areas that will see the ICO take a specific stance on.

The most notable with direct implications to advertising comes in the form of how privacy enhancing technologies will play a role for publishers / advertisers, where currently there is some discontent from the UK’s PECR regulation which can prevent some of these solutions (including contextual) from being compliant. The other big update is on the Consent or Pay model, which has seen various back & forth (notably from Meta) last year, but the ICO have issued some form of acceptance to this model going forwards.

For publishers & advertisers, the ICO previously vetted the top 200 websites in the UK for their consent implementations specifically around data capture on their websites. This will now be expanded to the top 1000 websites in the UK, which is ominous news for a selection of publishers & advertisers who still to this day have non-compliant consent banners in place on their websites, which under GDPR can lead to a hefty fine.

Regulation & data privacy in general remains a key area to keep on top of, not only for the end advertiser but also the technologies leveraged as part of any advertising. With the fall out of the various antitrust cases still to come, we are also seeing newer updates, whether it be the CMA now looking at Google Search similar to the US, calling out Mobile operating systems or even the potential implications of Trump’s policy changes on EU / US Data Transfer, it is a pretty important time.