On March 13, 2018, Dr. Georg Huber, LL. M., spoke at the GALA (Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance, http://www.galalaw.com) Annual Meeting on data protection requirements in marketing on social medial. Our law firm is the only Austrian GALA member.
Lawyers specialised in advertising law from over 50 countries attended the Annual Meeting. The topics dealt with include data protection, promotional contests and influencer marketing (paid advertising by bloggers, for example on YouTube).
Lawyer Georg Huber spoke on data protection in connection with marketing on social media. Among other things, he presented two cases presently before the European Court of Justice, whose outcome could impose significant obligations on advertisers.
The key point is that by using social media, for example with plug-ins or by setting up web sites on Facebook etc., information duties or legal consent requirements could result. The Advocate-General of the ECJ is of the opion that in such cases advertisers are “accountable” alongside Facebook in terms of data protection law, although Facebook is the one processing the data.
It remains to be seen how the ECJ wil rule. 80% of the time, however, it follows the opinion of the Advocate-General.
Therefore businesses that are already advertising on social media should examine whether or not they are satisfying the requirements of the data proctection regulations. Businesses planning to advertise on social media should pay special attention to data protection right from the start. This, incidentally, is also the case for company apps.
Here you can view the speech on YouTube: Georg Huber on YouTube
