One Year of DSA Implementation: The Unbalanced Landscape and Challenges of Advertising Transparency Governance

One year after the implementation of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), although a legal framework for advertising transparency has been established, the implementation shows obvious imbalance—there are significant differences in compliance levels between large and small platforms, across different regions, and among different types of advertisements. At the same time, it faces challenges at the technical level (such as insufficient data accessibility and targeted disclosure) as well as law enforcement resources and global coordination. Measures such as strengthening law enforcement and unifying standards are needed to promote a more transparent digital advertising ecosystem.

The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) officially came into full effect on February 17, 2024, and is one of the core pillars of the EU's digital strategy, aiming to establish a safer, more transparent, and responsible digital environment. Among its provisions, the advertising transparency clauses require large platforms to disclose information such as ad content, advertiser identity, targeting parameters, display time periods, and coverage to address the "black box" problem of digital advertising, allowing users to understand why ads are pushed and facilitating the tracking of political ads and the spread of harmful content.

Advertising transparency has become a core issue of the DSA due to three key characteristics of the digital advertising ecosystem:

1. Hyper-precise targeting: Algorithm recommendations based on user profiles and behavioral data easily raise concerns about manipulation and discrimination (e.g., micro-targeting of political ads undermines consensus);
2. Real-time bidding mechanism: Programmatic transactions involve multiple participants, making it difficult to track the flow of ads;
3. Platform intermediary role: Large platforms act as content hosts, ad publishers, and data controllers, and the concentration of power poses regulatory challenges. The DSA provisions break information asymmetry through mandatory disclosure, empowering users, researchers, and regulatory authorities.

The compliance situation one year after the DSA implementation shows obvious imbalance:

• Platform size differences: Large platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) have comprehensive compliance, while small and medium-sized platforms only meet the minimum requirements or evade obligations;
• Regional differences: EU member states have varying law enforcement intensities, and extraterritorial effect faces challenges;
• Ad type differences: Political ads have higher transparency than commercial ads, and the disclosure of targeting parameters for commercial ads is insufficient.

There are multiple challenges at the technical level:

• Data accessibility: API rate limits hinder large-scale data collection, data delays/missing affect real-time supervision, and inconsistent formats increase the difficulty of cross-platform analysis;
• Insufficient disclosure of targeting parameters: Only vague category labels are provided, without disclosing specific logic and data sources;
• Dark patterns and evasion strategies: Bad actors evade regulation by changing materials, linking accounts, and exploiting gray areas of algorithms.

Positive progress: Established a transparency baseline, empowered independent research to discover violation cases, and raised public awareness to promote industry self-regulation; Ongoing challenges: Insufficient regulatory law enforcement resources, difficulty in updating regulations to keep up with technological iterations, and lack of global coordination affecting governance effectiveness.

Policy recommendations based on implementation experience:

1. Strengthen law enforcement and accountability: Actively investigate and penalize violations, and establish clear compliance standards;
2. Promote unified technical standards: Lead the development of international data standards to enhance global collaboration;
3. Invest in public research infrastructure: Establish independent research platforms supported by public funds;
4. Address emerging technology challenges: Proactively update the regulatory framework to respond to transparency issues brought by new technologies such as generative AI.

The reference value of DSA experience for China:

• Legislation first: Refine digital advertising regulatory rules under the existing legal framework;
• Transparency as a governance tool: Address issues such as false advertising and online fraud by improving transparency;
• Multi-party collaborative governance: Achieve effective governance by combining government regulation, platform self-regulation, social supervision, and technical support.