2025 mid-year review

I’m Alan Chapell. I’ve been working at the intersection of privacy, competition, advertising and music for decades and I’m now an industry analyst writing for The Monopoly Report. I’m hosting another ASK ME ANYTHING session this Friday, July 11 at 11:30am EDT.

Our latest Monopoly Report podcast is out with Samuel Levine, former Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission. Sam co-wrote a paper with Lina Kahn about how privacy was undercut back in the 1980’s - and how the FTC attempted to bring it back during their tenure at the Commission. We also talk about DNT, Industry self-regulation, notice and choice and the pro's and con's of a harms based approach.

Some Under Considered Stories in 2025

Editor’s Note: It’s the middle of summer and I’m heading to Europe for a month. But don’t worry - I won’t be constantly posting pictures of how hard I may or may not be working as if it’s the third week of June. This trip is mostly family and recharge time. I’ll probably be posting here every other week for a bit unless something really important happens in the regulatory world.

As we’re half-way through 2025, I thought I’d put together a list of under-considered stories. Keep in mind, these aren’t necessarily the MOST important stories or trends. Rather, these are the stories that - at least in my view - aren’t getting enough oxygen. So if you’re looking for more on TPC deprecation, the UK CMA or Google’s antitrust woes, you may want to look at our previous coverage. Or you can wait until the Texas AG trial commences… or when Judge Mehta’s decision drops - both of which are currently slotted for August. But keep your eyes peeled on those dates as they are subject to change.

Practical Tips for Short-Attention Spans….

1. Data Minimization / Secondary Use of Data - There’s an emerging data governance issue that is going to have a big impact on the digital media space. Policymakers are increasingly looking at site privacy policies to see if the scope of the privacy notice is aligned with the intended use case. If it isn’t aligned… and/or if the use case doesn’t conform to the reasonable expectations of a consumer, a consent is required. This issue came up recently in the recent California Attorney General CCPA enforcement action against Healthline Media - but is also being raised in several state privacy laws, including the most recent Connecticut Data Privacy Act update. I’m not sure the ad industry has collectively thought through the ramifications of these types of requirements.

2. Have a written Data Processing Agreement - I find it baffling how many companies still don’t have these in place and/or don’t properly scope them to the requirements under applicable law. And for the love of god, the fact that you “don’t touch PII” is not a viable response in 2025.

3. Fix your CMP - I understand that it’s not exactly a sexy topic, but we need publishers, advertisers and even ad tech companies spending more time ensuring that their consent management platform (CMP) is properly configured. It’s not just all the CIPA class-actions - you now have companies getting dinged for CCPA violations because someone forgot to setup the CMP. There are a bunch of smart privacy operations consultants out there who would be happy to help. Leaving these issues to Johnny the marketing intern who comes in every other Tuesday is probably not going to work.

4. Vibe Targeting - AI is ushering in new levels of innovation into the data and audience space. Some really cool and ingenious ideas our there for rethinking how audiences are created and ad decisioning is made. But please keep in mind that - in the minds of privacy regulators - your use of AI almost certainly involves the processing of personal data and the creation of a profile. What’s worse, privacy laws are requiring that you be much more transparent in how audience profiles are being created. It’s easy to view AI as the new wild west. But be advised - regulators are having none of it.

Trends Posing Existential Challenges

5. Own the pipes = own the audience? Lot’s of models are built on the idea that one has an economic interest in all data going through one’s plumbing. Perplexity certainly is taking that approach… same with Apple. I predict that this concept is going to come under much more scrutiny in competition and IP circles over the next year.

6. To UID or NOT to UID? - Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for investing in ID Less solutions. But as of today, many (if not most) of those ID less solutions are significantly less effective than status quo. (Not to mention, a few of them offer a dubious privacy benefit). I don’t see any reason why ad tech companies should be rushing to move away from the UID space unless there are similar rules placed on our walled garden competitors. I discussed that issue here and on a recent TMR podcast.

7. Class action enforcement coming to Europe? - If you think getting chased by class-action plaintiffs in the U.S. is fun, wait till you see what’s coming in Europe. The knock on the EU when it comes to privacy has traditionally been that the standards are sky-high but enforcement is non-existent. Welp, Europe has recently been bitten by the class-action bug. And Max Schrems and his NOYB team will soon be bringing EU style class-action enforcement your way.

8. Moratorium on AI rules? - You may remember all the press coverage on the budget reconciliation bill that made its way through the U.S. Congress. The initial versions of that bill imposed a moratorium on state driven AI rules. While that preemption effort did not bear fruit (and mostly served as political jazz-hands to detract from some other really problematic items within the bill). But rest assured, this won’t be the last attempt to unchain AI from state level rules.

9. What Copyright? - A very famous, successful and savvy entrepreneur once told us all that we need to be paying more attention to carbon in the ads space - noting that it’s not even debatable that carbon is ruining both the environment and ecosystem. One might say the same thing when it comes to content creation. It’s not even debatable - the ads space is dependent upon content creators and to the extent that those go away we’re all going to be reliving the first scene of the Lorax. Cloudflare’s approach will help - particularly if other CDNs follow suit AND if someone figures out how to get Google to separate search indexing from AI indexing (good luck!). But the battle over the use of content to train LLMs is perhaps the biggest issue that most in the ads space are not focusing on - perhaps because it may not directly impact YOUR bottom line in Q3.

10. The Saga over the TikTok ban - Last, but not least, many of us are sleeping on the shit storm that’s being unleashed in connection with the TikTok ban and subsequent delays. It’s hard to have have a vibrant economy for long without a functioning democracy. Watch as this all unravels over the next six months into shareholder lawsuits and trade wars.

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If there’s an area that you want to see covered on these pages, if you agree/disagree with something I’ve written, if you want tell me you dig my music, or if you just want to yell at me, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or in the comments below.