The German advertising manufacture is afraid about the dominance of American technology companies. "The gross from non-digital offers falls importantly in favour of online advertising, but in the online advertising marketplace the marketplace position of platform companies is so dominant that they are hard to undermine and can control competition," said the press agency dpa Bernd Nauen , Managing manager of the Central Union of the German Advertising manufacture (ZAW). "This makes them guards and dominant players in the advertising market".
Customers in Germany invested almost €14 billion in net advertising last year. This means that, for the first time, more than half of EUR 26.7 billion has entered the network. The remainder was distributed in printed media, television, outside advertising, radio, cinema and direct marketing.
Most of the gross from digital advertising goes to global platforms Google, Amazon, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and TikTok, and according to ZAW (German Advertising Agency Association) by 2025 this percent is expected to emergence to 72%. The association is the leading organization of the advertising manufacture in Germany. In association with 43 associate organisations, it represents all sectors and disciplines of advertising – from advertising agencies and the media to marketplace research.
"Probably monopolistic"
The head of the association, Nauen, cited Google as an example of ‘equivalence’. The company not only controls ads in search engines "practically monopolistic", but is besides 1 of the most crucial intermediaries in online advertising, allowing it to favour its own technological services and advertising space – at the expense of competing suppliers, advertising companies and independent net publishers. "This practically prevents fair competition," Nauen said.
The European Union has recognised this problem and launched a number of legislative projects, specified as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), aimed at reducing the dominance of global platforms. On this basis, the EU has already imposed advanced fines on US Apple and Meta.
Re-enable digital sovereignty
However, there is now a second question as to whether this is adequate to break the marketplace power of American technological giants: US president Donald Trump has just announced that he will impose criminal duties on Europe if national digital companies on our continent are in a "disadvantaged position" due to the laws in force.
"Now the point is to proceed to guarantee that fair competition and digital sovereignty in Europe and Germany can again be achieved," urged the head of ZAW to political decision-makers not to give way to these threats.
