By Maria Cadbury, CRO at WULT
Earlier this week we saw the ICO taking action against Sky Betting and Gaming for using cookies without consent.
Sky Bet’s warning shot was due to the technology using data within the moments before customers make a choice to accept or deny cookie tracking. This was likely due to new technologies being added after the consent structure was implemented, mistakenly bypassing consent restrictions. This serves as a good reminder that compliance and governance are not ‘set and forget’ tasks but require continuous monitoring.
Is this something that could have been identified – Yes! With real-time data compliance technology.
Looking at the European market trends, Germany and France stepped up their small to medium size adtech business fines and the expected trend from ICO was to set the same course in the UK. The ICO (UK focus) may have been slower than the rest of the European markets as it seems they have been focusing heavily on the tech media giants with the billions in fines across Google, TikTok, and WhatsApp. It’s interesting to note, these are organisations based in the UK and Ireland. We can see a dramatic increase over the years and with a continued increase in the number of fines with a big increase in 2023 for mid-level adtech companies.
Let’s be clear – this was a warning shot not only to Sky Bet but to all publishers and all actors in the ecosystem. The UK is set for serious evaluation across the ecosystem, starting with the publishers.
Historically, warning shots are fired just before the fines are issued. The ICO is not in the business to take down businesses, this is not like the Google and DOJ trial, where it appears that the aim is to break down Google and address the open web. This is where the ICO is looking to the industry to clean up how they operate. Taking the example of Criteo, the €40m fine came after the warning shots from adtech players such as the IAB Europe, for the TCF, Quantcast and Oracle (BlueKai).
We know, based on the ICO release, that the ICO is evaluating the top 200 sites. Research shows that out of the top 100 sites, 53 were not fully compliant and have been contacted by the ICO with the second 100 sites likely to follow. This gives the sites time to get their compliance affairs in order. Once done many actors will feel they have done their job and revert back to the annual surveys and manual systems they operate in.
However, legislation and technology at a publisher or adtech vendor level changes throughout the year on a regular basis. Unless the adtech players are using real time data they can not ensure they are compliant.
The ICO issuing Sky Bet a warning also emphasises the reason why brands are increasingly asking for data compliance reassurance within the supply chain. What’s more, the missing piece of data curation solutions is the data compliance data.
It will become business critical to have the right real time technology solution to your data compliance.
