DMA designated services: which advertising and store gateways currently bind a game buyer

European campaign owners should point to the Commission’s Gatekeepers Portal and the text of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925—not to blog recaps—when asking which advertising and store services are designated. As of this check the portal states seven gatekeepers and 23 core platform services (CPS) under supervision.

Current designated gatekeepers and ad-relevant CPS

The portal (accessed 19 September 2026) records first designations on 6 September 2023 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft), Apple iPadOS on 29 April 2024, Booking.com on 13 May 2024, and undesignation of Meta’s Facebook Marketplace on 23 April 2025.

Advertising and store CPS of direct interest to mobile-game buyers include:

Obligations that bind advertising relationships

For designated online advertising services, Article 5(9) requires the gatekeeper to give each advertiser (or authorised third party), on request and free of charge, daily information on price and fees paid, publisher remuneration (subject to publisher consent, else daily averages), and the metrics used to calculate them. Article 5(10) mirrors the duty toward publishers.

Article 6(8) requires free access, on request, to the gatekeeper’s performance measuring tools and the data needed for advertisers and publishers to run independent verification of ad inventory.

The Commission’s 7 March 2024 compliance notice states that the six originally designated gatekeepers had to fully comply with DMA obligations from that date (six months after September 2023 designation). Later designations follow their own compliance clocks from their designation decisions.

Who should act, and how

EU-facing UA and measurement leads should:

1. Map each media buy to a named CPS on the portal (e.g. Meta Ads vs Instagram social networking; Alphabet online advertising vs YouTube).
2. Request Article 5(9)/6(8) transparency and measurement access from designated ad services where commercially relevant.
3. Treat store CPS (Google Play, App Store) separately from ad CPS when assessing sideloading, steering or ranking duties—those Articles are adjacent but not summarised exhaustively here.
4. Re-open the portal after any designation news; do not rely on secondary “DMA explainer” posts as the roster.

Editorial inference: for a game buyer, the practical DMA lever on paid media is advertising price/fee transparency and independent verification access—not a guarantee of lower CPI.

Limits of this record

Portal roster and selected Articles 5(9), 5(10) and 6(8) only. Full Articles 5–7 store, messaging and ranking obligations are not catalogued. Enforcement decisions (e.g. later fines) are out of scope unless they change the designation list. Apple Ads / Apple Maps non-designation reports from February 2026 were not required for this card because those services are absent from the portal CPS list.

Research checked 19 September 2026. Local draft; human editorial review and byline assignment pending.