Tech giants control of online advertising puts national security at risk: report

A woman uses a keyboard in North Vancouver, B.C., Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

TORONTO — The hold tech giants have on the online advertising industry is putting national security at risk, a new report says.

Google, Meta and Amazon control more than 90 per cent of the market meant to sell online advertising in Canada, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a think tank devoted to addressing concentrations of power.

Much of the market is comprised of software running automated, high-speed auctions that allow companies to bid trillions of times a day on the users that will see their ads.

The auctions happen in the moments between when someone navigates to a website and when that page loads and can contain plenty of personal information such as a person’s location or their web browsing history.

The lots can also be combined with data from other sources to assemble a glimpse at a person’s health, finances, sexuality and religious and political beliefs, in addition to their vices, friends and family, where they go and who they meet, the think tank said.

“This creates quite a big security risk for anyone that might be the target of surveillance by any powerful actor,” said Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project.

While the security risk exists for all Canadians, it’s more perilous for access to be available to detailed, location-specific data sets about government officials or other people whose identities or jobs are sensitive and meant to be closely guarded, Bester said.

Research from his think tank shows the data sets can capture entry points to secret facilities, when someone leaves behind their device at the entrance, or piece together the state of a sensitive individual’s finances, struggles with addiction or mental health, marital troubles and even, family relations.

Because some governments haven’t restricted how that data can be used and “very little can be done to limit the availability of this information for foreign adversaries,” the report said it creates an opportunity for blackmail and extortion.

Pair the data with online advertising auctions and anyone with malintent can then bombard specific groups of users with misinformation or embed spyware into the marketing they’re fed, Bester said.

“You have not only the Identification and tracking of an individual, but the actual ability to inject malicious software into systems that these individuals -- whether they’re dissidents, government officials or elected officials -- use,” he said.

To minimize these harms, Bester feels there’s a few things the country can do.

“The first step, really, is to clamp down and limit the ability to create and sell this data, when it comes to Canadians...because as long as the data continues to be generated and available for purchase, the risk will persist,” he said.

If the country can do that, it still faces even more of “an uphill battle” from his second ask: breaking up the consolidated power of large firms who influence and distort advertising markets for their own profit.

“Companies like Google, companies like Meta have an interest in keeping the system going,” he said, noting their business models are heavily reliant on these practices and they have lots of funding and lobbyists to defend them.

Bester’s recommendations come as Google is locked in battles with the U.S. Justice Department and Canada’s competition watchdog, which are both suing it over alleged anticompetitive online advertising practices.

The Competition Bureau has said the practices have discouraged competition from rivals, limited innovation, inflated advertising costs and reduced publisher revenues.

Its arguments stem from the fact that Google owns four of the largest online advertising technology services used in the country: DoubleClick for Publishers, AdX, Display & Video 360 and Google Ads.

Together, they have a market share of 90 per cent in publisher ad servers, 70 per cent in advertiser networks, 60 per cent in demand-side platforms and 50 per cent in ad exchanges, the Competition Bureau has said.

Google, which is set to make a constitutional challenge in the case, has maintained online advertising is a “highly competitive sector” and the bureau’s complaint “ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2025.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press