WIREDGOV

Lord Gilbert of Panteg, Chairman of the Communications Committee, has responded to the announcement of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that it will conduct a market study of the advertising market as part of a new Digital Markets Strategy.

• CMA Digital Markets Strategy
• CMA: Market study into online platforms
• Report: Regulating in a digital world (HTML)
• Report: UK advertising in a digital age (PDF)

Chairman's comments

Lord Gilbert has responded to the CMA's new digital markets strategy:

"On behalf of the Lords Communications Committee, I welcome the CMA’s decision to undertake a market study of digital advertising and its digital markets strategy. The Communications Committee called for a market study in its reports 'UK advertising in a digital age' and 'Regulating in a digital world'. We found that the market for delivering digital advertising to consumers is dominated by a small number of very large companies but is poorly understood and opaque. This market study should shine a light on the inner workings of the market and help the UK advertising industry regain the trust of the public.

"More broadly the Committee believes that digital markets pose significant challenges to competition regulators. Market power on the internet is concentrated in a small number of companies. These online platforms have significant market shares and buy start-up companies before they can become competitive. Their size means they can cross-subsidise services across markets to make them free to users. This challenges the traditional understanding of the consumer welfare standard. Competition regulators have struggled to keep pace with fast-changing digital markets. I hope that the CMA’s digital markets strategy will be an important step in addressing these issues."

Further information

• About Committees: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees