The French antitrust watchdog has given Meta two months to change its access rules for ad verification partners.

The Autorité de la concurrence on Thursday published a statement following up on complaints made by ad-verification and insights platform Adloox in October 2022. The firm complained that the Facebook owner was taking unfair advantage of a dominant marketing position in online advertising, having been denied access to Meta’s invite-only ad verification data from 2016-2022.

The statement said: “The Autorité considered that the conditions for accessing Meta's "viewability" and "brand safety" partnerships were likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position and cause serious and immediate harm both to Adloox's interests and to the independent ad verification sector.

The watchdog added that it has ordered Meta to “define and make public new criteria for accessing and maintaining "viewability" and "brand safety" partnerships which are objective, transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate.”

The regulator has also issued an injunction to allow Adloox to “be rapidly admitted to these partnerships, provided that the company meets the new access criteria,” it said.

A spokesperson for Meta called the ruling an “interim decision” and said the company is “considering all our options”.

Elsewhere, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday accused Facebook of misleading parents about how much control they have over who their children can contact within the Messenger Kids app. The FTC has also proposed extending an existing agreement on privacy to include a ban on making money from minor’s data, including in virtual reality.

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