An update on political advertising in the European Union

Google supports democratic elections around the world by ensuring voters have access to high-quality and reliable information, protecting our platforms from abuse and providing campaigns with best-in-class security tools and training.

We work closely with governments, advertisers and civil society organizations to support responsible political advertising across our platforms. In recent years, we have invested in industry-leading election ads programs that support user safety and promote transparency.

For example, since 2019, we have required all advertisers wishing to run election ads in the EU to meet enhanced transparency requirements, including identity verification and in-ad disclosures that clearly show who paid for each ad. We have also established disclosure requirements for the use of synthetic or digitally altered content in election ads, maintained a dedicated Political Ads Transparency Report and restricted how advertisers can target election ads. As a result, there is more transparency regarding political ads on our services than there is for comparable television, newspaper or radio ads.

The European Union’s upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms. For example, the TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale. There is also a lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States. And key technical guidance may not be finalized until just months before the regulation comes into effect.

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