Election integrity and protection of minors are the other priority areas so far earmarked for DSA enforcement.
The European Commission is putting online platforms’ compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) in relation to advertising transparency under scrutiny, commissioning a study looking into areas for improvement.
Visionary Analytics, the agency tasked with the report, said in a statement today (11 September) that it will conduct an analysis of every Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) and Search Engine designated under the DSA in all official EU languages.
This will include monitoring of advertisements on the largest platforms, as well as on the smaller ones. It will also include an analysis of the contents, functionality and usability of ad repositories. More specifically, the study will look at the DSA’s articles 26, 28 and 39, which focus on advertising, as well as the protection of minors.
Online platforms are required under the DSA to make their ad repositories public, with the aim to give users information into how commercial communications are used.
The goal of the report is to generate insights into best practices, areas for improvement, gaps in compliance, and provide recommendations for the platforms, the agency said. The project is expected to be finished by March of next year.
The DSA – under which companies face transparency and election integrity requirements – has applied to all online platforms as of last February. The largest platforms, those that have more than 45 million monthly users in the EU, needed to comply from August 2023.
Up till now the EU executive has designated 25 VLOPs including Amazon, LinkedIn, Meta and Temu, and started a number of non-compliance investigations into platforms including TikTok and X.
Euronews reported in June that online platforms will be given specific DSA guidelines on the protection of minors in the second quarter of 2025. This comes after the Commission started several investigations to check whether online platform’s measures to protect minors online are compliant with the rules.
It will be the second set of principles to come out under the DSA, after the Commission published election guidelines ahead of the June EU vote to help very large online platforms and search engines to mitigate risks impacting the integrity of elections and their services.
