Small businesses storm Capitol Hill over digital ad costs and privacy bills
Internet for Growth brings small businesses to Washington to push back on rising digital ad costs, state taxes, and privacy rules threatening Main Street jobs.
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A coalition of small business owners and entrepreneurs descended on Capitol Hill today and tomorrow - May 12 and 13, 2026 - to press lawmakers directly on what they describe as the rising cost of operating online. Internet for Growth, which organised the event as its fourth annual fly-in during National Small Business Month, brought entrepreneurs and digital creators from across the country to Washington to argue that congressional and state-level decisions on privacy legislation, digital advertising, and artificial intelligence are already shaping what it costs to run a small business - and, by extension, what consumers pay.
The fly-in is not a routine stakeholder event. It arrives at a moment when Congress is actively weighing a national privacy framework that could displace dozens of state laws, while individual states are advancing digital advertising taxes that small businesses say would push costs up the supply chain and onto them. According to Internet for Growth, the coalition represents hundreds of small businesses, entrepreneurs, creators, and digital professionals across all 435 congressional districts.
The legislative backdrop
The timing of the fly-in is inseparable from two parallel tracks of legislation. On April 21, 2026, Representative Joyce of Pennsylvania introduced the SECURE Data Act (H.R. 8413), a House Republican bill that would replace all US state privacy laws with a single federal framework. Internet for Growth expressed conditional support for the bill the following day, while explicitly warning that its opt-out provisions for targeted advertising could reduce the addressable audience for every small business running digital campaigns - including those operating well below the bill's controller thresholds.
The Association of National Advertisers endorsed the SECURE Data Act on April 22, 2026, framing its support around the 29 million US jobs the advertising industry supports. That argument aligns broadly with Internet for Growth's position, but the coalition goes further: it insists that policymakers understand how restrictions on targeted advertisingcascade through the supply chain. Even small businesses exempted from certain obligations in the bill would feel the effects if platforms, data services, and ad tech vendors face higher compliance costs.
The second track is state-level taxation. Washington State began charging sales tax on advertising services on October 1, 2025, implementing Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5814. Washington became the first state to comprehensively tax digital advertising services under a standard retail sales tax framework - 6.5 percent at the state level, plus applicable local rates reaching up to 4.1 percent. Internet for Growth argues that other states are watching Washington's model and that a wave of similar measures would compound costs for small businesses that depend on digital channels.
What the polling shows
Internet for Growth commissioned a national voter research report to accompany the fly-in. According to Internet for Growth, the polling found that 94 percent of voters say digital tools are essential for small business survival. Separately, 78 percent of respondents opposed new taxes and regulations on digital advertising. The political profile of that opposition is notable: according to PPC Land's earlier coverage of the event's media advisory, Trump voters and Harris voters showed nearly identical levels of opposition to additional digital advertising regulation. That cross-partisan pattern is central to Internet for Growth's argument - it suggests that the political cost of imposing new restrictions is distributed evenly across the electorate.
The polling was conducted by Echelon Insights on a sample of 1,030 likely voters, surveyed September 5 to 7, 2025, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Internet for Growth published the findings under the title "Main Street's Digital Mandate: What Voters Expect from Policymakers."
Beyond voter sentiment, Internet for Growth's research includes a survey of more than 2,400 small businesses. According to Internet for Growth, SMB advertisers estimated their businesses grew 39 percent over two years because of digital advertising. Additionally, 82 percent said digital ads help them reach customers more efficiently. These figures underpin the coalition's argument that restricting or taxing digital advertising is not a neutral policy choice - it is one with measurable effects on revenue and employment at the small business level.
The businesses making the case
The fly-in is not an abstract lobbying effort. Specific business owners travelled to Washington to speak from direct experience. Ben Wolfgram, co-founder of BenShot - a Wisconsin-based, family-run glassware company - described how digital tools enabled the business to grow from a local family project to a nationwide operation.
"Digital tools are how we built our business from the ground up," said Wolfgram. "What started as a father-and-son project grew into a nationwide business because we can reach interested customers online in affordable and effective ways. We support reasonable privacy protections, but some proposals would make it harder for businesses to use ordinary advertising data to reach people interested in their products."
Mike Samet, CEO of Digital Ignite, a digital marketing agency, put the argument in terms of the broader ecosystem his agency serves.
"As a digital marketing agency, we see firsthand how digital advertising and data-driven tools help small businesses reach customers, grow efficiently, and compete in today's online economy," said Samet. "There's an entire ecosystem of firms like ours helping businesses navigate digital marketing, e-commerce, social media, and customer outreach. These tools create opportunities that simply didn't exist for small businesses a generation ago."
Brendan Thomas, Executive Director of Internet for Growth, framed the coalition's position on national policy in terms of structural interconnection - specifically, the argument that small businesses face indirect consequences from regulations nominally aimed at larger platforms.
"Small businesses support reasonable privacy protections and clear rules of the road online," said Thomas. "But policymakers should also recognize how interconnected digital advertising, media, marketing, and e-commerce have become in today's economy. Even when small businesses are exempt from certain requirements, higher costs and restrictions placed elsewhere in the system may be passed down through the platforms, services, and tools they rely on to reach customers and grow."
The congressional meetings
The fly-in includes meetings with a bipartisan set of Senate and House offices. According to Internet for Growth, participants will meet with offices including Senators Chris Coons, Cory Booker, Tammy Baldwin, and Lindsey Graham, as well as Representatives Sarah McBride, Jim Clyburn, Frank Pallone, and others. The meetings span members and staff serving on committees overseeing privacy, technology, commerce, and small business issues.
The economy the coalition is asking lawmakers to protect is sizable. According to Internet for Growth, the digital economy is now valued at $4.9 trillion and supports 28.4 million US jobs across all 435 congressional districts. That framing - jobs distributed across every district, not concentrated in technology hubs - is a deliberate structural argument. It is designed to give members from non-technology states a concrete local reason to weigh the downstream effects of legislation on digital advertising markets.
The AI dimension
The coalition is also raising AI as a policy concern, though its angle is not about AI risk - it is about AI opportunity. According to Internet for Growth, coalition members argue that artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are becoming the next major opportunity for small businesses and creators, helping them save time, better understand customers, improve advertising performance, and compete more effectively without large teams or budgets. Many of these capabilities are already embedded in the digital advertising, marketing, and e-commerce platforms small businesses use daily.
Internet for Growth's position is that thoughtful policy can preserve access to these tools, while poorly designed regulation or taxation could price smaller businesses out of the AI-enabled advertising ecosystem - leaving advanced capabilities to better-resourced competitors.
Why this matters for the marketing community
For marketing professionals and advertisers, the Internet for Growth fly-in is a signal about where small-business political pressure is concentrating. The questions being raised in Washington are not abstract. The SECURE Data Act's opt-out mechanism for targeted advertising - if enacted and widely adopted - would reduce the targetable audience for every business running digital campaigns in the United States. That effect compounds the targeting loss already introduced by state-level privacy laws. As PPC Land noted, 56 percent of surveyed brands, agencies, and publishers reported already facing limitations in audience targeting where state privacy laws were in effect, according to Proximic by Comscore's 2024 State of Privacy in Advertising Report.
State advertising taxes present a separate but related pressure. Washington's 6.5 percent state rate on advertising services - in force since October 1, 2025 - created a template that other states could replicate. For small businesses allocating limited budgets across paid search, social advertising, and programmatic channels, even modest cost increases alter what campaigns are viable. A 6 to 10 percent increase in platform costs would not simply reduce margins - it would push some campaigns below the threshold of economic justification entirely, particularly for businesses with thin margins or localised customer bases.
The privacy policy landscape is also technically complex. The US currently operates under a patchwork of state laws - with at least 14 state privacy laws enforceable at the start of 2025 and additional laws taking effect throughout the year. Each law imposes different consent requirements, different definitions of sensitive data, and different obligations for data processors. The compliance burden of managing those variations falls not only on large platforms but on any vendor, agency, or tool provider operating across multiple states. Internet for Growth's argument - that costs placed on platforms are passed down to small business customers - reflects how that compliance burden moves through the supply chain.
The AMERICA Act, reintroduced in the Senate on March 13, 2025, targets a different layer of the same ecosystem. That bipartisan bill would prohibit companies with more than $20 billion in annual digital advertising revenue from simultaneously operating multiple supply chain layers. Its potential effect on programmatic infrastructure - and therefore on the costs and efficiency that small businesses experience when buying digital ads - is an open question that the May fly-in participants are not directly addressing, but that sits in the background of the broader regulatory conversation.
Timeline
- September 5-7, 2025: Echelon Insights conducts national survey of 1,030 likely voters on behalf of Internet for Growth (margin of error plus or minus 3.4 percentage points)
- October 1, 2025: Washington State begins charging sales tax on advertising services at 6.5 percent state rate plus applicable local rates
- March 13, 2025: Senator Mike Lee reintroduces the AMERICA Act, targeting structural separation of large digital advertising platforms
- April 21, 2026: SECURE Data Act (H.R. 8413) introduced in the House by Representative Joyce of Pennsylvania, proposing to replace all US state privacy laws with a single federal framework
- April 22, 2026: Internet for Growth issues a statement expressing conditional support for H.R. 8413 while raising concerns about digital advertising access
- April 22, 2026: Association of National Advertisers endorses the SECURE Data Act, citing 29 million US advertising jobs
- May 6, 2026: Internet for Growth issues media advisory announcing the fly-in and releasing the polling report "Main Street's Digital Mandate: What Voters Expect from Policymakers" - covered by PPC Land
- May 12-13, 2026: Internet for Growth's fourth annual fly-in takes place on Capitol Hill during National Small Business Month; participants meet with bipartisan Senate and House offices
Summary
Who: Internet for Growth, a nationwide coalition of small businesses, entrepreneurs, creators, and digital professionals. Key participants include Brendan Thomas (Executive Director), Ben Wolfgram (co-founder, BenShot), and Mike Samet (CEO, Digital Ignite), along with other small business owners from across the country.
What: A two-day fly-in to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where participants are meeting with bipartisan congressional offices to advocate on digital advertising policy, privacy legislation, and state-level advertising taxes. The event is the coalition's fourth annual fly-in and is accompanied by a national voter poll showing 94 percent of voters view digital tools as essential for small business survival and 78 percent oppose new taxes and regulations on digital advertising.
When: May 12-13, 2026, during National Small Business Month. The accompanying polling was conducted September 5-7, 2025.
Where: US Capitol Complex, Washington, D.C. The broader policy debate spans the US Congress and state legislatures, including Washington State, which implemented an advertising services tax on October 1, 2025.
Why: Congress is actively considering a national privacy framework - specifically the SECURE Data Act (H.R. 8413) - that would replace all US state privacy laws with a single federal standard. Internet for Growth supports that consolidation in principle, but warns that opt-out provisions for targeted advertising and additional cost burdens on the digital advertising supply chain would reduce small businesses' ability to reach customers affordably. The coalition argues that when digital advertising costs rise or become less effective, the impact moves quickly into consumer prices, hiring decisions, and local economic growth.