Digital Markets Act

The Digital Markets Act is an EU law that forces the largest platforms, called gatekeepers, to get real consent before combining your data across their services.

The DMA targets a short list of dominant players like Google, Meta, and Amazon. Among its rules, a gatekeeper cannot cross-use or combine personal data between its services, or fold in data from third parties, unless the user has given specific consent. That reshapes how advertising audiences get built on those platforms.

Say you advertise through a gatekeeper's ad system. Where it once quietly merged behavior across its properties to target people, the DMA now requires that person to have agreed to that combining first, which narrows the pool you can reach without consent.

This law lands on the platforms, not directly on your small business, but the effects flow downhill to you. The honest catch is the ongoing fight over pay-or-consent models, where platforms offer a paid ad-free tier as the alternative to agreeing. The Commission has challenged that design, so the ground under your targeting keeps shifting.

You do not sign the DMA, but you inherit its fallout.