California privacy law has not hit publishers' ad revenues

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which enables residents of the state to opt-out from sales of their personal data on websites, has had little to no impact on ad revenues, prices or inventory.

That is according to a survey of around two dozen publishers, conducted by digital ad consultancy Beeler.tech and revealed by Digiday.

Key findings

• Publishers and ad tech executives believe the main reason the CCPA turns out to have had little impact on their bottom line is because of low opt-out rates among Californians. (By contrast, the European Union’s Global Data Protection Regulation requires users to consent to data collection by opting in.)
• In other words, compliance notices required by the CCPA make it easier for people to click to accept cookies rather than to opt-out.
• However, while the CCPA has not hit revenues, publishers expect it to have an indirect impact by inspiring similar laws in other states or even federal regulation.
• Technological change is likely to have a bigger impact than the CCPA, especially with Google planning to disable third-party cookies and Apple restricting ways of targeting users with ads.

Key quote

“A ton of effort has gone into compliance on the part of publishers, but there is no upside or downside revenue-wise” – Rob Beeler, CEO of Beeler.tech.

Sourced from Digiday