Digital advertising is a massive $700 billion (£530 billion) industry that is largely unregulated, with few laws in place to protect brands and consumers. Companies and brands advertising products often do not know which websites display their ads. I run Check My Ads, the ad tech watchdog, and we regularly deal with situations where advertisers and citizens have fallen victim to lies, scams and manipulation. We have removed ads from serious websites disinformation About this COVID-19, false election materialand even AI-generated obituary,
Currently, if a brand wants to advertise a product, Google facilitates ad placement based on the desired ad reach and metrics. It may technically comply with the agreement by providing views and clicks, but does not provide transparent data about how and where ad views came from. It's possible that advertising is being shown on uninteresting websites that are completely contrary to the brand's values. For example, in 2024, Google was found to be profiting by placing product advertisements on websites that promote hardcore pornography, disinformation, and even hate speech against the brand's wishes.
However, in 2025, this scam will end as we begin to enact the first regulations targeting the digital advertising industry. Around the world, lawmakers in Brussels, Ottawa, Washington and London are already in the early stages of developing regulation that would ensure brands have the legal recourse to ask questions, examine ad data and receive automatic refunds. Be received. Digital campaigns have been subject to fraud or security breaches.
For example, in Canada, Parliament is debating enacting the Online Harms Act, a law encouraging the removal of sexual material involving minors. The idea behind this law is that if the content is illegal, then making money from it should also be illegal.
In California and New York, advocates are also proposing legislation that would aim to enforce Know Your Customer laws to monitor the global financial trade of advertising. This is important because both of these states power the global ad tech industry. New York has more ad tech companies than any other city in the world. On the other hand, transparency laws implemented in California will affect the international advertising business of Google – by far the world's largest ad tech company.
Beyond brand and consumer issues, the unregulated nature of the digital advertising landscape is a direct threat to democracy. For example, presidential campaign spending in the US is effectively unregulated. It is estimated that presidential campaigns will spend up to $2 billion (£1.5 billion) on digital advertising in 2024. With current laws, we will not have any external data about their refunds or rates.
In 2025, there is legislative pressure on big tech companies to regulate ad technology.