The competition authority on Thursday ended an old dispute between Facebook and Criteo. For more than three years, the French leader in targeted advertising has suspected the American company of having unjustly excluded him from one of its advertising programs, “Facebook Marketing Partners”. After investigating the case, the board of the agency estimated that Meta, the group to which Facebook belongs, had made sufficient pledges to end the case and bury all cases.
The American giant therefore avoids a heavy sanction. After consulting most of the digital advertising providers, the French antitrust authority decided that the market test carried out with several advertising providers, including Criteo, met the concerns of the key players concerned. After launching a market test last year, Facebook pledged to be more transparent about the affiliate program’s affiliate rules and to maintain “objectivity, transparency, predictability and stability” of its access terms.
Three years and beyond?
For three years, Facebook must meet five commitments across all its platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. For example, they are asking to provide advertisers with a new programming tool (API) entitled “Recommendation Functionality” that will be open to all service providers to recommend and best customize their products on their social networks. the price of their advertising auctions. The sales teams are also better trained.
What if Facebook didn’t respect them? “In that case, the authority would hit harder,” warns Henri Piffaut, vice-president of the competition authority (ADLC). “Above all, we wanted to take this decision as quickly as possible and restore healthy competitive conditions,” explains Benoît Coeuré, the new head of the authority. “We believe this decision addresses most of the concerns raised by the referral to Criteo in September 2019,” said Isabelle de Silva’s successor, who has been at the helm of the institution since January.
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The brothers who are enemies of advertising will finally be able to reconcile after five years of open hostility. “We’ll finally be able to do business with Facebook again,” admits someone close to the case. In 2017, the break had been harrowing, to say the least. By blocking access, Criteo was prevented from measuring the performance of its advertising campaigns on the social network. The company then fell 11% on the Nasdaq, according to a statement released by bank Goldman Sachs in September 2018.
A severe sanction that the management team experienced badly at the time. Excluded from privileged partner status, the French start-up then turned to the competition authority to denounce the attempts at “denigration” it saw itself victimized by Facebook. For example, “emails” and “exchanges” were noted in which Facebook’s sales teams had tried to dissuade customers from entering into a contract with Criteo from late 2017.
Meta in a position of strength
“We are very pleased with today’s decision (…) and look forward to partnering with Meta again to buy ad inventory on their platforms,” said Ryan Damon, Criteo’s Chief Legal Officer. The reopening of the market comes at the right time as society has to reinvent its model and deal with the disappearance of cookies on the internet.
Meta’s influence in the advertising market is well established. According to the e-pub observatory, Meta already occupied 50% of the digital advertising market in France in 2019. An activity in which the company has invested heavily under the influence of Sheryl Sandberg, former right arm of Mark Zuckerberg, has installed Facebook at the rank of advertising giant. Last year, Meta made nearly $114.7 billion in ad revenue, neck and neck with the industry’s other behemoth, Google, at $127 billion.