Newsroom: Winter 2025. SDKs under fire, AI Agents everywhere, AI Act-GDPR overlaps, major cases and serious fines

It is time for a seasonal update at the intersection of Marketing, Data, Privacy and Technology. As usual, this Newsroom is divided into five blocks: ePrivacy & regulatory updates; MarTech & AdTech; AI, Competition and Digital Markets; PETs and Zero-Party Data; and Future of Media.

TL;DL: The use of SDKs for data collection/sharing has been a common factor in various fines and lawsuits on both sides of the pond. The EDPB sparked an important debate on personal data-powered AI in the EU. Texas and California went after Allstate and Honda respectively. La Liga (ES), Netflix (NL), Meta (IR), and others received fines. The FTC put an end to personal data sales by General Motors. The My Health My Data Act (WA) was put to the test. AI “reasoning” models exploded, and then AI Agents followed. Garante (IT) blocked DeepSeek and a class action in Germany could have a major impact across the EU. Australia updated its legal framework. The biggest CDP players dissolved into adjacent markets and Google kept marching towards PET-powered AdTech.

All references and links can be found in this episode’s blog post.