Big Tech Regulation Tightens in APAC; Social Video Spend Growing; Reddit Rolls Out New Public Data Policy

On today’s news digest: Big Tech Regulation Tightens in APAC; Social Video Spend Growing; Reddit Rolls Out New Public Data Policy 

The regulation of big tech is tightening in several countries in the APAC region. Japan, South Korea and Australia are tightening rules to rein in the market power of tech giants. In Tokyo, the cabinet of Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida recently approved legislation which sets out to prevent the largest online platforms from using their dominance to thwart new rivals. In South Korea, officials intend to introduce new legislation to regulate online platforms: e-commerce players, streaming services and social media providers will be targeted. Meanwhile in Australia, recent regulatory efforts have focused on digital payments and enforcing existing measures being resisted by tech companies. This year, the government will introduce legislation which imposes obligations on social media companies, among others. 

Social video spend is still increasing in the US, and is expected to reach just over 45% of total digital video ad spend this year, according to a forecast by eMarketer. Share growth is slowing however, with rates expected to increase only 1% between 2024 and 2026. This predicted slowdown could be the result of a plateau in time spent with social video, with brands still struggling to produce short-form creatives at scale. By 2025, the forecast expects more money to be spent on social video ads than linear TV ads. 

Staying in the social sphere, Reddit is rolling out a new policy aimed at striking a balance between licensing its content to larger tech companies and protecting the privacy of its users. This follows a recent deal the social platform made with Google which gave the tech giant access to its data. The newly introduced Public Content Policy will serve to guide how Reddit’s data is accessed and used by commercial entities as well as other partners. 

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