With the consumer continuing to be at the center of activities, the European Union’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA) is a law that enables fair competition within the digital industry. The DMA aims to do this with the help of regulating the behavior of large tech platforms.  

According to official sources, the political agreement on the new law was reached on the evening of 24th of March 2022 by the European Parliament and the Council (representing the 27 EU Member States).  The text was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council on 14th September 2022.  It was published in the Official Journal on 12th October 2022 and will become applicable on 2nd May 2023. 

The law is said to apply to major providers of core platform services and will certainly include companies like Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon. One of the criteria might be revenue based so that companies like Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are marked as gatekeepers. These companies will be regarded as “gatekeepers” — defined as companies with a market capitalization of more than €75 billion ($83 billion USD) and 45 million monthly active EU users. It will also require gatekeepers to place certain measures allowing third-party software to function properly and interoperate their own services.  

A key aspect to make note of is that the fines for non-compliance are higher in DMA as compared to the GDPR. While the European Union has authority over companies in Europe – it won’t be able to have the same power over Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon. The US government would have to introduce laws for this.  

Read more about the DSA and the implications of the DMA and DSA on the AdTech and MarTech sector.