A Brief Look at Recent Market Developments Since The Bundeskartellamt’s Sector Inquiry into Online Advertising and Ad Technology

In a Discussion Report published in August 2022 the Bundeskartellamt outlined the findings of its sector inquiry into non-search online advertising and presented them to market participants and observers for discussion. About one year after the editorial deadline of the Report, this article discusses some market developments which have become observable in the meantime and relates them to the Discussion Report’s findings regarding the market structure, the dispute about the use of personal data for advertising purposes and effective competition oversight in a highly complex, technically fast-moving and opaque sector in which one player is in a very special position.

By Holger Dubberstein^[1]

In August 2022 the Bundeskartellamt published a Discussion Report summarizing the findings of its sector inquiry into online advertising.^[2] Based on a number of interviews with market participants with different positions in the online advertising value chain and on several hundred responses to written questionnaires sent out to advertisers, media agencies, publishers and ad technology providers, the Report undertook to describe the value chain and its technical elements, discuss plausible market definitions, and identify market positions and the factors which are likely to influence them.

Extending the view beyond the situation at the time, the Report’s two final chapters were each devoted to possible changes in the landscape: One analyzed, amid lasting discussions abou