In February 2017, the Dutch DPA published a final report in the investigations into Facebook that concluded that it was violating Dutch privacy laws on many counts. The latest development is an announcement by the Spanish DPA of a fine of 1.2 million Euro’s for Facebook for violations of Spanish data protection laws. The increased scrutiny has led to enforcement measures in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. 2.0 Increased regulatory scrutinyįacebook currently is under intensified scrutiny of a special contact group of European data protection authorities, which include the DPAs from Spain, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. We will finish this article with our view on the regulatory impact of the Facebook pixel for corporates.

We will then describe how the Facebook Pixel works, including a description of relevant Facebook conditions. They need to accept responsibility for their use and work with both Facebook and the data protection authorities to mitigate their risk if they intend to continue to use Facebook as a digital marketing channel.īelow we will first provide an overview of the current regulatory climate for Facebook. In our view, the current regulatory climate for Facebook, the litigation in which it is involved and the upcoming GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation creates an immediate requirement for corporates that use the Facebook pixel to start to be engaged on the regulatory requirements of Facebook digital marketing. Furthermore, their Facebook digital marketing investment may be at risk, large corporates generally spend multiple million Euro’s in Facebook ads. If this risk materializes this may impact their Facebook digital marketing effort and potentially result in enforcement by data protection authorities. For companies that are actively involved in digital marketing via Facebook the Facebook pixel may provide a regulatory risk that is not yet on their radar.

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