What fashion needs to know about the EU-US tech regulation battle

"These controls directly affect marketing plans, as the tech platforms that brands and advertisers rely upon to sell their products may have to operate completely differently in each market to satisfy conflicting regulations. A luxury brand's Instagram campaign could face different content standards, targeting options, tracking and measurement, depending on where users are located, Madonia flags."

""This added complexity could undermine retargeting campaigns that typically drive repeat purchases," she says. This could force fashion brands to diversify their advertising approaches and explore alternative customer acquisition methods in markets like Europe that could face more limited platform functionality."

"As brands race to invest in AI tools that promise to fix online shopping's discovery and personalisation pain points, increased regulatory fragmentation poses a fundamental threat to the way these AI models work, too. They typically process customer data across borders, but brands could be forced to run separate systems for US versus EU customers. "This would reduce accuracy and could devastate companies whose entire business depends on AI-powered recommendations," says Madonia."

EU and UK requirements for region-specific content moderation and privacy controls will force platforms to operate differently across markets, disrupting common advertising features. Marketing campaigns may encounter varying content standards, targeting options, tracking limits, and measurement differences depending on user location. Retargeting campaigns that drive repeat purchases could weaken, prompting brands to diversify acquisition methods and adapt strategies. Global tracking and analytics solutions may produce scattered, hard-to-compare data sets. Messaging and customer service functions may vary with local encryption rules. AI-driven personalization models that rely on cross-border data may need separate systems, reducing accuracy and harming recommendation-driven businesses.

Read at Vogue Business