A New Era for Digital Advertising

For a small business owner in Europe today, digital advertising is both a lifeline and a minefield. It’s the channel that lets a boutique fashion label in Lisbon compete with global brands, or a café in Berlin reach tourists before they’ve even booked their flights. In fact, SMBs now account for over 70% of advertisers on major digital platforms. They are fueling an ecosystem worth €118.9 billion in Europe in 2024, a 16% increase from 2023 and the strongest growth in European digital ad spend since 2011, with digital now accounting for 67% of total ad spend across the region.

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) has redrawn the boundaries of what’s possible. Beyond transparency and targeting restrictions, it changes how platforms must serve advertisers. SMBs, however, often lack compliance expertise, and even small frictions, such as extra disclosures, restricted targeting, and more complex dashboards, can dampen their spend. For platforms, the stakes are high: Noncompliance risks fines of up to 6%3 of global turnover, but the real cost is lost advertiser confidence.

While compliance is already reshaping how platforms engage with their SMB advertisers, the challenge becomes exponentially harder in highly regulated verticals.

Discover how platforms can turn compliance complexity into a competitive edge, especially for small and medium advertisers navigating today’s digital landscape.