# Advertising Practices and Requirements under DSA — legal context bundle > Curated from overview.legal on 2026-08-22. Canonical page: https://overview.legal/topics/advertising-practices-dsa > Sources are cited per item. Verify against the official texts before relying on them. This new topic is needed to specifically address advertising practices on online platforms under DSA, including transparency requirements, content moderation of ads, disclosure of sponsored content, and protection against misleading or deceptive advertising practices. ## Overview ## Legal Framework The advertising-specific obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA) are primarily governed by **Articles 39 and 40**. These articles establish distinct transparency and accountability regimes for online platforms and for very large online platforms (VLOPs)/very large online search engines (VLOSEs), respectively. The legal requirements stem from the particular risks advertising systems pose due to their scale and sophisticated targeting capabilities, as recognized in Recital 95. Article 39 DSA mandates that *all* online platforms ensure recipients can identify, in a clear and unambiguous manner, that the information presented to them is an advertisement. They must also disclose, on whose behalf the advertisement is presented, and meaningful information about the main parameters used to determine the recipient to whom the advertisement is displayed. Article 40 DSA imposes enhanced obligations on VLOPs and VLOSEs, requiring them to maintain and provide public access to a searchable repository containing detailed information about all advertisements served on their interface. This repository must include the content of the ad, who paid for it, the period it was displayed, and the targeting criteria and parameters used. ## Practical Application The authoritative commentary emphasizes that these provisions are designed to mitigate systemic risks from opaque advertising systems by enabling public and regulatory scrutiny. For VLOPs/VLOSEs, the repository under Article 40 is not a passive archive; it must be designed to facilitate meaningful analysis of advertising practices, including the identification of advertisers and the logic behind ad targeting. This supports the overarching DSA goals of protecting recipients against misleading or manipulative advertising and ensuring accountability. While Article 39 applies broadly to platforms, its requirement to provide "meaningful information" about targeting parameters necessitates a contextual assessment based on the complexity of the platform's advertising system and the data used. ## Key Considerations * Platforms must implement technical and design solutions to ensure advertisements are labeled conspicuously and that disclosure information about the advertiser and targeting is easily accessible to the user, as required by Article 39. * VLOPs and VLOSEs must build and maintain a publicly accessible, searchable, and machine-readable ad repository compliant with Article 40's detailed specifications, ensuring data is retained for one year after the ad's last display. * Organizations should review their advertising interfaces and backend data logging to ensure they can generate and present the required disclosures in real-time (for users) and in comprehensive detail (for the public repository, if applicable). ## Legislation (full text of key provisions) ### Additional online advertising transparency *Source: DSA, dsa-art-39-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/94672* ### Codes of conduct for online advertising *Source: DSA, dsa-art-46-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/94839* ### Recital 68 — online advertising transparency requirements *Source: DSA, dsa-rec-68-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95533* Online advertising plays an important role in the online environment, including in relation to the provision of online platforms, where the provision of the service is sometimes in whole or in part remunerated directly or indirectly, through advertising revenues. Online advertising can contribute to significant risks, ranging from advertisements that are themselves illegal content, to contributing to financial incentives for the publication or amplification of illegal or otherwise harmful content and activities online, or the discriminatory presentation of advertisements with an impact on the equal treatment and opportunities of citizens. In addition to the requirements resulting from Article 6 of Directive 2000/31/EC, providers of online platforms should therefore be required to ensure that the recipients of the service have certain individualised information necessary for them to understand when and on whose behalf the advertisement is presented. They should ensure that the information is salient, including through standardised visual or audio marks, clearly identifiable and unambiguous for the average recipient of the service, and should be adapted to the nature of the individual service’s online interface. In addition, recipients of the service should have information directly accessible from the online interface where the advertisement is presented, on the main parameters used for determining that a specific advertisement is presented to them, providing meaningful explanations of the logic used to that end, including when this is based on profiling. Such explanations should include information on the method used for presenting the advertisement, for example whether it is contextual or other type of advertising, and, where applicable, the main profiling criteria used; it should also inform the recipient about any means available for them to change such criteria. The requirements of this Regulation on the provision of information relating to advertising is without prejudice to the application of the relevant provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, in particular those regarding the right to object, automated individual decision-making, including profiling, and specifically the need to obtain consent of the data subject prior to the processing of personal data for targeted advertising. Similarly, it is without prejudice to the provisions laid down in Directive 2002/58/EC in particular those regarding the storage of information in terminal equipment and the access to information stored therein. Finally, this Regulation complements the application of the Directive 2010/13/EU which imposes measures to enable users to declare audiovisual commercial communications in user-generated videos. It also complements the obligations for traders regarding the disclosure of commercial communications deriving from Directive 2005/29/EC. ### Recital 107 — online advertising codes of conduct *Source: DSA, dsa-rec-107-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95611* The provision of online advertising generally involves several actors, including intermediary services that connect publishers of advertisements with advertisers. Codes of conduct should support and complement the transparency obligations relating to advertising for providers of online platforms, of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines set out in this Regulation in order to provide for flexible and effective mechanisms to facilitate and enhance the compliance with those obligations, notably as concerns the modalities of the transmission of the relevant information. This should include facilitating the transmission of the information on the advertiser who pays for the advertisement when they differ from the natural or legal person on whose behalf the advertisement is presented on the online interface of an online platform. The codes of conduct should also include measures to ensure that meaningful information about the monetisation of data is appropriately shared throughout the value chain. The involvement of a wide range of stakeholders should ensure that those codes of conduct are widely supported, technically sound, effective and offer the highest levels of user-friendliness to ensure that the transparency obligations achieve their objectives. In order to ensure the effectiveness of codes of conduct, the Commission should include evaluation mechanisms in drawing up the codes of conduct. Where appropriate, the Commission may invite the Fundamental Rights Agency or the European Data Protection Supervisor to express their opinions on the respective code of conduct. ### Recital 102 — voluntary technical standards for compliance *Source: DSA, dsa-rec-102-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95601* To facilitate the effective and consistent application of the obligations in this Regulation that may require implementation through technological means, it is important to promote voluntary standards covering certain technical procedures, where the industry can help develop standardised means to support providers of intermediary services in complying with this Regulation, such as allowing the submission of notices, including through application programming interfaces, or standards related to terms and conditions or standards relating to audits, or standards related to the interoperability of advertisement repositories. In addition, such standards could include standards related to online advertising, recommender systems, accessibility and the protection of minors online. Providers of intermediary services are free to adopt the standards, but their adoption does not presume compliance with this Regulation. At the same time, by providing best practices, such standards could in particular be useful for relatively small providers of intermediary services. The standards could distinguish between different types of illegal content or different types of intermediary services, as appropriate. ### Recital 95 — very large online platforms advertisement repositories *Source: DSA, dsa-rec-95-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95587* Advertising systems used by very large online platforms and very large online search engines pose particular risks and require further public and regulatory supervision on account of their scale and ability to target and reach recipients of the service based on their behaviour within and outside that platform’s or search engine's online interface. Very large online platforms or very large online search engines should ensure public access to repositories of advertisements presented on their online interfaces to facilitate supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online, for example in relation to illegal advertisements or manipulative techniques and disinformation with a real and foreseeable negative impact on public health, public security, civil discourse, political participation and equality. Repositories should include the content of advertisements, including the name of the product, service or brand and the subject matter of the advertisement, and related data on the advertiser, and, if different, the natural or legal person who paid for the advertisement, and the delivery of the advertisement, in particular where targeted advertising is concerned. This information should include both information about targeting criteria and delivery criteria, in particular when advertisements are delivered to persons in vulnerable situations, such as minors. ## Recent developments ### 1,741 “informed” consents with one click?! GDPR complaint against dict.cc filed *Source: noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, 2026-07-30 — https://overview.legal/posts/184576 — original: https://noyb.eu/en/1741-informed-consents-one-click-gdpr-complaint-against-dictcc-filed* Cookie Banners Today, noyb has filed a complaint against the popular online dictionary dict.cc. The GDPR requires that consent is freely given, informed, specific and unambiguous. However, when visiting dict.cc, users are nudged into consenting to online tracking by a staggering 1,741 (!) “partners” with a single click. This makes it impossible for users to know exactly who has access to their data and how it is actually used. While dict.cc is an extreme example, requests to blindly waive your r ### ‘Pay or Okay’ study: Users prefer a tracking-free “third option” *Source: noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, 2025-12-04 — https://overview.legal/posts/49178 — original: https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-study-users-prefer-tracking-free-third-option* Cookie Banners So-called ‘Pay or Okay’ systems are on the rise in Europe. Instead of giving users a choice to either accept or reject ad tracking, Pay or Okay systems require a payment if you want to refuse to give your “consent”. This nudges 99.9% of users to consent, even if they actually don’t want to do so. Given the upcoming guidelines by the European Data Protection Board on this highly controversial approach, noyb has commissioned a study about user choices. Download the user study on Pay ### Snap Election faster than German DPAs: Microtargeting continues to influence voters *Source: noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, 2025-02-21 — https://overview.legal/posts/53161 — original: https://noyb.eu/en/snap-election-faster-german-dpas-microtargeting-continues-influence-voters* Political Microtargeting, Manipulation & Tracking In March 2023, noyb filed complaints against several German political parties: During the 2021 elections, CDU, AfD, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Die Linke and the Ecological Democratic Party illegally used political microtargeting to attract voters. Now, almost two years later, we are just one day away from the next federal election. However, the competent Data Protection Authorities still haven’t decided these cases – and political parties still ### Political Microtargeting by EU Commission illegal *Source: noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, 2024-12-13 — https://overview.legal/posts/53170 — original: https://noyb.eu/en/political-microtargeting-eu-commission-illegal* Political Microtargeting, Manipulation & Tracking noyb win against the European Commission: The EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) has issued a decision finding that the European Commission has illegally targeted advertising at citizens using "sensitive" personal data on their political views. Decision by the EDPSComplaint filed with the EDPS in 2023Related noyb complaints in Germany ("Target Leaks")EU Commission tried to influence political views in the Netherlands. In the contentious f ### GDPR complaint against X (Twitter) over illegal micro-targeting for chat control ads *Source: noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, 2023-12-14 — https://overview.legal/posts/53207 — original: https://noyb.eu/en/gdpr-complaint-against-x-twitter-over-illegal-micro-targeting-chat-control-ads* Political Microtargeting, Manipulation & Tracking Today, noyb filed a complaint against X (Twitter) for unlawfully using the political views and religious beliefs of its users for targeted advertising. The company used this specially protected data to determine whether people should or should not see an ad campaign by the EU Commission’s Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, which tried to ralley support for the proposed “chat control” in the Netherlands. In November, this unlawful ## Related topics - **Marketing** — https://overview.legal/topics/marketing Use of personal data for marketing and advertising purposes - **Personal Data** — https://overview.legal/topics/persoonsgegevens Information relating to identified or identifiable natural persons - **Monitoring** — https://overview.legal/topics/monitoring Systematic observation and tracking of individuals - **Transparency** — https://overview.legal/topics/transparantie Openness about data processing activities - **Consent** — https://overview.legal/topics/toestemming Freely given, specific, informed indication of data subject wishes - **Online Interface Design and Organization** — https://overview.legal/topics/online-interface-design-organization-dsa This topic is needed to specifically address DSA requirements regarding how online service providers must design and organize their interfaces to ensure transpa --- Generated by overview.legal · https://overview.legal/topics/advertising-practices-dsa · 2026-08-22