Eight players, 83 % of growth, a European share melting away
In 2025, the French digital advertising market reached 12.4 billion euros [9]. A 11 % increase compared to 2024. This market has been growing for seven years at approximately 13 % per year.
But growth is not evenly distributed. Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok and four other global players capture 76 % of investments and 83 % of annual growth [9]. European players are declining: 19 % of the market in 2025, versus 20 % in 2024 and 21 % in 2023. The trajectory is slow, steady, and nothing will reverse it spontaneously.
This concentration stems from the sector’s structure. Computing power, massive volumes of data to train AI models, rare and expensive talent: the barriers to entry are considerable, the Competition Authority emphasizes in its opinion of 28 June 2024 [7]. Strategic partnerships between already-established players risk finally locking down the sector. The Senate frames the issue in a June 2026 report: to make AI “an open public square, and not a closed garden reserved for a few hegemonic players” [11].
Training data, fuel provided for free for twenty years
The disruption extends beyond digital advertising. Hundreds of millions of European profiles have been feeding the training of large AI models for two decades. This fuel, provided without compensation, is now building competitive advantages that the Competition Authority judges structurally difficult to challenge [7].
AI will affect all economic sectors, not just tech. It modifies all production processes and the way people work, according to the June 2026 Senate report [11]. The capture of productivity gains is at the heart of the problem.
The employment shock is quantified. If agentic AI were widely deployed, more than 40 % of occupations would exceed the threshold of 30 % of their tasks being substitutable, calculates Axelle Arquié (CEPII) [13]. Productivity gains accumulate with the owners of digital capital. The tax base funding the social model erodes, a structural imbalance that has been documented since 2026 [13].
The digital sector modifies power relations between states, gives rise to new powers and forces public authorities to reposition themselves, observes Stéphane Grumbach in his analysis of the geopolitics of algorithms [15]. Europe is losing its capacity to influence its own rules of the game.
What the French would accept to receive, what platforms actually capture
The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) commissioned a survey conducted from 18 to 23 December 2024, among 2,082 people aged 15 and over [2]. The results reveal a striking asymmetry.
65 % of respondents say they are ready, in 2024, to sell their data [2]. The most frequent valuation falls between ten and thirty euros monthly, cited by 28 % of them. Only 6 % would accept less than one euro per month [2]. Conversely, 35 % refuse any monetization, regardless of the price.
The platform captures on average forty euros per month per profile, according to this same survey [2]. This market does not really exist: users cede value in an asymmetrical relationship, often without understanding what they are consenting to.
The year 2024 had set a record for data breaches reported to the CNIL. This record was exceeded in 2025, with nearly 10 % additional notifications [4]. The diversity of targets is striking: telecommunications operators, state ministries, sports federations. Personal data is a resource coveted by all market players, legal and illegal alike.
The European framework exists, fiscal policy lags by twenty years
The Digital Markets Act has regulated the power of the largest digital companies since May 2023 [12]. Thomas Philippon judges it a genuine advance while underscoring its limits in the face of structurally anticompetitive behavior [17]. The Lasserre report, published on 28 November 2024 under the auspices of the CNIL, proposes fifteen recommendations to deepen convergence between data protection and competition policy [5].
Fiscal policy remains behind. The tax on digital services, adopted by France in July 2019, levies 3 % on revenues from targeted advertising and intermediation platforms [19]. It has never been generalized across Europe. Pillar 1 of the OECD agreement on the taxation of multinationals, which was supposed to better distribute tax based on actual activities in each country, has been deadlocked diplomatically since 2025.
At the joint CNIL-Competition Authority seminar in March 2025, Jean Tirole posed the general condition [18]. Without robust rules imposed ex ante on dominant positions, data in new business models raises new questions at the intersection of competitive analysis and data protection. Regulation must precede market dynamics.
Making the market contestable or watching value leave
Three levers would change the trajectory. Their effectiveness depends on their simultaneous implementation.
The first is to make data portability effective. The GDPR has provided for this right since 2018; it is little exercised, poorly understood, insufficiently technical. Proposition 7 of the Lasserre report calls for launching a joint reflection on this right, involving ARCEP and DMA forums [5].
Interoperable technical formats, standardized and imposed on platforms designated as gatekeepers, are the concrete condition. Without real portability, aggregated data remains trapped within the platform that collected it. No new entrant can build a competing model.
The second is to extend the tax on digital services. The French digital services tax, adopted in 2019 and blocked at the European level, must be defended within the framework of OECD Pillar 1 or become a resource of the Union [19]. Its revenue should feed a digital sovereignty fund. This fund would finance public data infrastructure that could serve as a training base for European models. Fiscal policy must adapt to protect wage income and direct investment toward skills [13].
The third is to designate AI models as gatekeepers without delay. The Competition Authority recommends that the Commission evaluate the possibility of designating generative AI model suppliers in the cloud as access controllers under the DMA [7]. This extension would condition access to European markets on compliance with transparency obligations on training data and interoperability with third-party actors. This is the most structurally significant lever in the long term.
These three levers cost little in direct public spending. Their constraint is political: standing firm against American diplomatic pressure on digital regulation, intensified since 2025, and overcoming divisions between member states on platform taxation. Defending ambitious platform and training data regulation in European institutions, or accepting to be a consumption market in a digital economy whose rules are decided elsewhere: this is the 2027 decision point.
Sources
[2] CNIL / Harris Interactive, “Monetization of personal data: what is our data worth?”, November 2025, survey conducted 18–23 December 2024, https://www.cnil.fr/fr/monetisation-des-donnees-personnelles-combien-valent-nos-donnees (accessed 23/08/2026).
[4] CNIL, Annual Report 2025, May 2026, https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/2026-07/rapport_annuel_2025.pdf (accessed 23/08/2026).
[5] CNIL / Bruno Lasserre, “Conclusions of the reflection mission on the relationship between data protection and competition”, 28 November 2024, https://www.cnil.fr/sites/cnil/files/2024-12/rapport_mission_lasserre.pdf (accessed 23/08/2026).
[7] Competition Authority, Opinion 24-A-05 of 28 June 2024 on the competitive functioning of the generative artificial intelligence sector, https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr (accessed 23/08/2026).
[9] SRI / UDECAM / Oliver Wyman, 35th e-advertising Observatory: 2025 Assessment, 10 February 2026, reported by Stratégies, https://www.strategies.fr/actualites/medias/LQ5775609C/la-publicite-digitale-en-croissance-de-11-en-2025-en-france.html (accessed 23/08/2026).
[11] Senate, report “Enterprise 5.0: the impact of artificial intelligence on businesses”, June 2026, https://www.senat.fr/rap/r25-572/r25-5728.html (accessed 23/08/2026).
[12] European Commission, Digital Markets Act: About the DMA, applicable since May 2023, https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/about-dma_en (accessed 23/08/2026).
[13] Axelle Arquié, “The dual shock of AI: employment and taxation”, L’Économie politique, no. 110, 2026/2, https://shs.cairn.info/publications-de-axelle-arquie–111394 (accessed 23/08/2026).
[15] Stéphane Grumbach, The Empire of Algorithms: A Geopolitics of Control in the Age of the Anthropocene, Armand Colin, 2022.
[17] Thomas Philippon, interview Institut Montaigne, “Digital Markets Act: Does More Competition Lead to More Growth?”, 2021, https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/digital-markets-act-does-more-competition-lead-more-growth (accessed 23/08/2026).
[18] Jean Tirole, CNIL and Competition Authority, joint seminar on AI, competition and personal data, March 2025, https://www.cnil.fr/fr/ia-concurrence-et-donnees-personnelles-poursuite-des-travaux-entre-la-cnil-et-adlc (accessed 23/08/2026).
[19] Wikipedia / Directorate General for the Economy, “Tax on digital services (France)”, adopted 11 July 2019, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxe_sur_les_services_num%C3%A9riques_(France) (accessed 23/08/2026).
