European regulators enforce digital advertising unlinkability rules to block user tracking

The shift toward unlinkability transforms privacy from a compliance checkbox into a direct constraint on advertising revenue. By preventing the correlation of ad requests, logins, and purchases, these rules undermine the fundamental mechanics of frequency capping and deduplicated reach. For the streaming ecosystem, this forces a transition away from cross-site identity graphs toward first-party data silos and clean rooms that must now prove they meet the No Linkage standard. As the European consultation period closes on October 30, 2026, the industry must watch for whether the Digital Omnibus package’s relativity clause survives, which would determine if data can be classified differently depending on who holds the decryption keys.