EU Digital Services Act (“DSA”), which will apply to all in-scope intermediary service providers from 17 February 2024, provides that “online platforms” that present ads must ensure, for each ad, that recipients of the service are able to identify, in real time, that the information is an ad, the advertiser’s identity, the party paying for the ad, the main parameters for ad targeting and information on how to change those parameters (Article 26). On 22 January 2024, IAB Europe, the European association for the digital advertising and marketing industry, announced that it has produced Implementation Guidelines and a Technical Specification to support a standardised approach to the collection, compilation and transportation of the required data with a view to ensuring DSA compliance.

The requirements under the DSA depend on what type of intermediary service provider you are; hosting service, online platform or very large online platform (“VLOP”). Article 26 applies to “online platforms” which are defined under the DSA as a service that, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates information to the public.  The IAB Europe materials are also suitable for VLOPs, a type of online platform which has 45m or more average monthly active users in the EU, who must also comply with Article 26, but do not address the further obligations on VLOPs set out in Article 39 of the DSA relating to ad repositories. The materials also provide to two parallel pathways for rendering the DSA transparency information, one through the online platform and the other through the ad creative.

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