Following its Phase 2 provisional findings issued in August, the Competition and Markets Authority has concluded that Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy would reduce competition between social media platforms and that the deal has already removed Giphy as a potential challenger in the display advertising market.
The CMA panel reviewing the merger has concluded that Facebook would be able to increase its already significant market power in relation to other social media platforms by:
- denying or limiting other platforms’ access to Giphy GIFs, driving more traffic to Facebook-owned sites: Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, which already account for 73% of user time spent on social media in the UK, or
- changing the terms of access by, for example, requiring TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat to provide more user data to access Giphy GIFs.
As part of its in-depth investigation, the CMA also considered how the deal would affect the display advertising market. It found that, before the merger, Giphy had launched innovative advertising services which it was considering expanding to countries outside the US, including the UK. Giphy’s services allowed companies to promote their brands through visual images and GIFs.
The CMA found that Giphy’s advertising services had the potential to compete with Facebook’s own display advertising services. They would have also encouraged greater innovation from others in the market, including social media sites and advertisers. Facebook terminated Giphy’s advertising services at the time of the merger, removing an important source of potential competition. The CMA considers this particularly concerning given that Facebook controls nearly half of the £7 billion display advertising market?in the UK.
After consulting with interested businesses and organisations and assessing alternative remedies put forward by Facebook, the CMA has concluded that its competition concerns can only be addressed by Facebook selling Giphy in its entirety to an approved buyer.
