The story. Yes, according to one buyer-side executive: GDPR-driven limits on data sharing are slowing measurement and optimisation in European CTV, which is why the US market is moving “much faster.” (VideoWeek, 5 November 2026)
01What happened
- The comparison is US against Europe. Pablo Goya, VP Europe at mediasmart, said the US CTV market is progressing “much faster” than the European one.
- He names data sharing as the cause. In his words: “I think we are protecting the user probably too much, in terms of GDPR, data sharing, all that kind of stuff is limiting.” He tied the restrictions to progress on measurement and optimisation.
- He also flagged fragmented measurement. The interview, filmed at TV Rise 2026 in Seville, covers the evolution of performance in CTV and the fragmentation of measurement across the market.
The source is a short interview summary, so there are no market-size or growth figures to quote. This piece reads one executive’s view, not a dataset.
02What it means inside a GAM network
Goya’s complaint is about what happens after the impression, not before it. Buyers can reach European CTV audiences. What they struggle to do is prove performance and feed results back into bidding, because the identifiers and data flows that US campaigns rely on are harder to move across companies in Europe.
For a publisher this shows up as a pricing problem. Inventory that cannot be measured on outcomes tends to be bought on reach and priced like it. The same screen sold in a market with clean outcome loops can carry a higher floor.
Two cautions. Goya works for a buyer-side platform, and “protecting the user too much” is an opinion that privacy regulators and many publishers would contest. And one executive’s view does not show that the US-Europe gap comes from regulation rather than market maturity, supply structure or budgets.
Whether GDPR is the real brake on European CTV is arguable.
03What publishers should do about it
04The bottom line
Whether GDPR is the real brake on European CTV is arguable. That buyers are paying for what they can measure is not. Publishers who can supply privacy-safe proof of outcomes will price better than those who sell reach alone.
If you sell CTV and video inventory and want a second pair of eyes on your deal structure, see our CTV monetization work.