The Importance of The DMA on Mobile Marketers
Every day, giants like Google or Meta wield immense influence over our online experience. Now the European Union's latest proposed legislation, known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), seeks to stir things up further especially with it being enforced next year. This regulation aims to oversee these 'gatekeepers' in the digital sphere in a few specific ways.?
Let’s sum up how this legislation could affect you as a mobile marketer.
What Exactly Is The DMA?
This act aims to regulate big tech companies ('gatekeepers') like Google or Meta. It sets rules to ensure fairness, transparency, and competition in the digital market.?
For app marketers like yourself, it introduces new changes in privacy rules, opportunities via alternative app stores, and fairer rankings. Yet, it also brings compliance challenges. The DMA strives for fairness but faces challenges like broad definitions, fines that may not deter big companies, and the need for flexibility to foster innovation.?
Overall, it's a significant shift in the digital economy, aiming for a fairer digital playing field.
The Effect on Mobile Marketers?
This new piece of legislation will trigger significant disruption in your mobile marketing strategy. Since it revolves around explicit user consent for tracking, it will challenge you to pivot strategies toward privacy-centric approaches. I recommend taking a look at SKAdNetwork and Google’s Privacy Sandbox to get a better understanding of how it may impact you.?
The exciting news is that it will foster alternative app stores, which bring both opportunities and challenges for you. As marketers, we must be able to adapt distribution strategies, ensuring compliance with diverse app store policies while leveraging wider audience reach. Doing so will cause your app growth pains in budget allocation, learning new platforms, and consideration of incentives from these new challenges over Google and Apple.?
The act redefines app ranking rules, emphasizing quality over favouritism, presenting a challenge and opportunity for you to evolve marketing strategies in the competitive mobile ecosystem.?
Imagine a level playing field where your app can rank above Google’s or Apple's own and operated apps. This will give you a chance to acquire a vast amount of new users and set yourself apart. Users need new and fair ways to discover apps, and having Google or Apple front and centre creates less opportunity for you.??
My Thoughts on the DMA?
The DMA signifies a shift, not only in the digital markets but also in the mobile ecosystem. Yet its implementation isn't without legal challenges. I would expect these gatekeepers to contest and potentially dilute the DMA's impact. They are armed with massive legal teams, able to challenge every piece of language in their favour to keep themselves in the spotlight - meaning less opportunity for you.?
Enforcing penalties poses a complex challenge too, how will these penalties be enforced and are the current set penalties enough to scare these ‘gatekeepers’ away from continuing to do business as usual? I think not.?
Regardless, the DMA poses a great opportunity for app marketers to take a share of wallet away from Google and Apple within the EU. Giving more opportunities for users to engage with apps that would other be hidden in plain sight. This means more revenue and growth in utility-like apps.?
The true impact is yet to be seen from this piece of legislation, following up to date with what may happen is to your advantage. The EU app stores are going to see a real shift in new and exciting apps that challenge Google and Apple. It’s an exciting time to start strategizing, planning, and innovating how you can get in on the action.?