European countries have been investigating the business practices used by major US-based tech firms over privacy concerns. Some of these countries have also imposed hefty fines on several companies in recent years. Online behavioural advertising helps advertisers and publishers to display relevant ads and personalised marketing messages to users based on their web-browsing behaviour.
Social media giant Meta also uses these marketing tactics to show ads to users on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Norway’s data protection agency, Datatilsynet, has announced that it will temporarily ban the company from accessing the personal information of users for behavioural advertising campaigns. The country has also threatened to impose a fine on Meta if it continues to do so.
The ban is set to begin on August 4 and Norway will offer Meta three months to take corrective measures. The company will be fined one million kroner ($100,000) per day if it fails to comply. “We will analyse the decision… but there is no immediate effect on our services,” Meta said in a statement. Norway also mentioned that Meta needs to obtain users’ consent before running behavioural ad campaigns.
Why Norway is banning Meta’s advertising strategy
The Norwegian watchdog has claimed that Meta uses information like user location, the content they like and their posts for marketing purposes. In a statement, the regulator said: “The Norwegian Data Protection Authority considers that the practice of Meta is illegal and is therefore imposing a temporary ban of behavioural advertising on Facebook and Instagram.”
The Norwegian regulator noted that its ruling doesn’t mean that Facebook and Instagram will become inaccessible in the country. Moreover, Meta can run other forms of targeted advertising, such as contextual targeting, i.e. which doesn’t rely on tracking and profiling users.

Other setbacks suffered by Meta over data privacy
Austrian digital privacy campaign group “noyb” has welcomed Norway’s actions against Meta and has called the decision “a first important step”. The group has also lodged several complaints against Meta’s activities and hopes that data regulators in other countries will follow suit.
In early 2023, Meta suffered another major setback when European regulators dismissed the legal basis that the company used to justify collecting user data for targeted advertising. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) also rejected Meta’s various workarounds for collecting data. ECJ also asked antitrust regulators to take data privacy issues into account.