Article 26 Advertising on online platforms

Online advertising plays an important role in the online environment, including in relation to the provision of online platforms, where the provision of the service is sometimes in whole or in part remunerated directly or indirectly, through advertising revenues. Online advertising can contribute to significant risks, ranging from advertisements that are themselves illegal content, to contributing to financial incentives for the publication or amplification of illegal or otherwise harmful content and activities online, or the discriminatory presentation of advertisements with an impact on the equal treatment and opportunities of citizens. In addition to the requirements resulting from Article 6 of Directive 2000/31/EC, providers of online platforms should therefore be required to ensure that the recipients of the service have certain individualised information necessary for them to understand when and on whose behalf the advertisement is presented. They should ensure that the information is salient, including through standardised visual or audio marks, clearly identifiable and unambiguous for the average recipient of the service, and should be adapted to the nature of the individual service’s online interface. In addition, recipients of the service should have information directly accessible from the online interface where the advertisement is presented, on the main parameters used for determining that a specific advertisement is presented to them, providing meaningful explanations of the logic used to that end, including when this is based on profiling.

Such explanations should include information on the method used for presenting the advertisement, for example whether it is contextual or other type of advertising, and, where applicable, the main profiling criteria used; it should also inform the recipient about any means available for them to change such criteria. The requirements of this Regulation on the provision of information relating to advertising is without prejudice to the application of the relevant provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, in particular those regarding the right to object, automated individual decision-making, including profiling, and specifically the need to obtain consent of the data subject prior to the processing of personal data for targeted advertising. Similarly, it is without prejudice to the provisions laid down in Directive 2002/58/EC in particular those regarding the storage of information in terminal equipment and the access to information stored therein. Finally, this Regulation complements the application of the Directive 2010/13/EU which imposes measures to enable users to declare audiovisual commercial communications in user-generated videos. It also complements the obligations for traders regarding the disclosure of commercial communications deriving from Directive 2005/29/EC.

When recipients of the service are presented with advertisements based on targeting techniques optimised to match their interests and potentially appeal to their vulnerabilities, this can have particularly serious negative effects. In certain cases, manipulative techniques can negatively impact entire groups and amplify societal harms, for example by contributing to disinformation campaigns or by discriminating against certain groups. Online platforms are particularly sensitive environments for such practices and they present a higher societal risk. Consequently, providers of online platforms should not present advertisements based on profiling as defined in Article 4, point (4), of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, using special categories of personal data referred to in Article 9(1) of that Regulation, including by using profiling categories based on those special categories. This prohibition is without prejudice to the obligations applicable to providers of online platforms or any other service provider or advertiser involved in the dissemination of the advertisements under Union law on protection of personal data.