The following statement can be attributed to Jeff Joseph, President, Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA):
“The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act (CTDA) introduced yesterday by a bipartisan group of senators on the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust aims to prohibit companies with more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue from running a ‘digital advertising exchange.’ This would force structural and behavioral changes on large and medium-sized companies in the digital advertising space and likely require companies like Google and Meta to sell off parts of their business.
“For companies with more than $5 billion in digital ad revenue, the bill imposes requirements related to greater transparency, an obligation to act in their customers best interests, and to undergo an annual compliance test.
“This bill continues a trend seen in other recently proposed legislation, where legislators seek to use the blunt instrument of antitrust law to punish a handful of large corporations, focusing only on a company’s size, not its conduct. If there are issues that need to be addressed, this is the wrong way to do it. Not only is competition in the digital ad space dynamic, but digital advertising is also what makes the free and open internet that we all enjoy possible. Forcing these changes would give consumers fewer choices that would be more costly.
“We encourage lawmakers to consider other options to resolve conflict of interest concerns such as establishing a code of conduct to mandate individually tailored behavioral changes coupled with auditability that would be implemented across the entire industry, not just to a small group of companies that are disfavored simply because of their size. Our nation has long believed in punishing companies for bad behavior, not for their success. That principle should continue to stand in the digital age.”
