The European Union finalized a deal on the Digital Markets Act on Thursday. Though the regulations were created to limit the amount of anti-trust lawsuits that needed to be brought against the likes of Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple, they will also have an impact on their advertising business.

Of key importance to the ad industry is the provision that data collected for one service can no longer be used for another service. That means explicit consent will be needed if a company wants to combine data for targeted ads, or if a user is to be tracked across ads – essentially making Apple’s ATT and a corresponding update for Android part of the law. It will also limit companies to asking users to share their data a maximum of once per year.

Tech companies must also give sellers access to their marketing or advertising performance data on the platform.

Other provisions are primarily focused on the potential for anti-competitive behaviour. Those include companies not being able to rank their own products or services higher than those of competitors, pre-install certain software applications on their devices or web browsers, or requiring app developers to use certain services (like payment systems) in order to be listed in their app stores.

The regulations apply to companies that provide at least one online “core service”: app stores, search engines, social platforms, cloud services, advertising services, voice assistants and web browsers. They also apply to companies with a market cap of 75 billion euros and at least 45 million monthly users or 10,000 business users.

Though the new rules only apply to companies that do business in at least three EU member countries, as has been seen with regulations like GDPR, regulations set by the EU can often ripple out into other markets. In some cases that is because it is too complex for a company to operate in different ways across different jurisdictions, but in other cases, it is because lawmakers elsewhere model their own legislation after what the EU has already tested out.

The federal government in Canada is currently moving through what is expected to be a series of legislative measures to update regulations to be more in line with the modern digital economy, all of which will have an impact on international tech companies that do business here. Bill C-11 primarily covers content and aims to hold streaming services like Netflix to the same standards as media companies based in Canada. That is expected to be followed by updates to PIPEDA to bring it more in line with privacy standards set by jurisdictions like the EU, as well as a bill by the Heritage Minister implementing a version of the “Australia Model” that mandates ad companies like Google and Meta negotiate with news publishers for fair sharing of ad revenue.

It has also been proposed that the Competition Act – which dictates the activities of the Competition Bureau, the body that handles anti-trust matters in Canada – be reformed as well in order for privacy updates to be meaningful.