Transparency and targeting of political advertising
Transparency and targeting of political advertising
What is online political advertising?
Political advertising is central to informing people and to influencing how they vote.
It is not always easy to recognise a political advert. Transparency is important, so that audiences know what they are viewing.
Large amounts of personal data generated by digital devices are used to target potential voters with tailored political messages.
Online political advertising techniques can:
- impact citizens' right to privacy
- spread false information rapidly
- fragment the political debate
- manipulate voters.
Three layers of an online profile
What you share: real name, gender, friends, likes and other reactions, uploaded photos, status updates, events attended, profession (declared), relationship status (declared), places visited.
What your behaviour tells them: websites visited, ads clicked, number of interactions/posts per day, online purchase history, mouse movements tracked, typing speed, distance from other devices, phone call history, websites visited statistics.
What the machine thinks about you: quit a habit, new relationship, away from family, expectant parents, recently moved, frequent international travellers, suburban lifestyle, healthy food, game played in last 14,7 or 3 days, tattoo or piercing, new eating habits.
Source: Panoptykon Foundation.
Member state regulation in numbers
All 27 member states have rules on political advertising but:
- only 17 have rules that apply to the online environment
- only 3 out of the 17 member states have rules that are specific to online political advertising
- the other 14 member states simply apply the rules for offline political advertising to the online environment.
Source: European Parliament.
More EU-wide rules to prevent manipulation
The EU rules:
- facilitate the cross-border provision and oversight of political advertising services
- combat information manipulation and foreign interference in elections
- safeguard an open democratic debate in the EU member states.
To ensure transparency:
- there will be obligations on all economic actors involved in the preparation, publication and dissemination of political advertising
- the adverts must be clearly labelled as such and include information on who paid for the ad.
To contain targeting:
- ban on targeting and ad delivery techniques based on profiling using sensitive personal data such as on racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or political opinions
- use of other personal data is subject to explicit and separate consent and should be collected directly from the data subject.
Political advertising in numbers
The evolution of political advertising largely reflects the changes affecting the advertising market.
In 2021 $522,5 billion were spent worldwide on digital political advertising.
By 2026 spending is projected to reach $836 billion.
€43 million were spent on digital political advertising in Europe on Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube in the 20 weeks leading up to the 2019 European Parliament elections.
EU numbers
Online advertising is the largest advertising channel in the European Economic Area, generating more revenue than all other advertising channels combined.
Political advertising spent on Google in Europe between March 2019 and January 2022:
- Germany: €5 350 000
- Hungary: €2 960 000
- Netherlands: €2 430 000
- Romania: €1 930 000
- Sweden: €1 530 000
- Austria: €1 220 000
- Italy: €1 090 000
- Czechia: €749 000
- Bulgaria: €743 000
- Belgium: €727 000
- Greece: €686 000
- Spain: €681 000
- Finland: €674 000
- Malta: €533 000
- Poland: €512 000
- Croatia: €398 000
- France: €321 000
- Slovakia: €275 000
- Lithuania: €265 000
- Cyprus: €234 000
- Estonia: €154 000
- Latvia: €140 000
- Slovenia: €109 000
- Portugal: €41 300
- Ireland: €35 500
- Luxembourg: €19 800
*No data was available for funds spent on advertising in Denmark.
Sources: European Commission, European Parliament, Panoptykon Foundation, Statista.