Last few days I talked a lot about Meta running political ads despite their ban, covered by NOS and the AD . And it’s not just here: the same problem has been found in Belgium , Denmark , and documented by Justice for Prosperity . Your question might be: is this just Meta, or why the focus on that platform? The answer is: it’s not just Meta. Google, just like Meta, announced in 2025…
A press release from the Department of Homeland Security issued earlier this year announced the launch of a “multimillion-dollar ad campaign” that would leverage ads that are “hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message and digital”. The goal, in their words, is to send a “warning [to] illegal aliens to not to come to America and break its laws or…
Platform transparency reports are the primary tool we have to scrutinize the digital ad spending of governments and political actors. But what happens when these reports have gaps? Recently I stumbled upon a significant ad campaign from a state actor is running on YouTube while being absent from Google’s own Ad Library. The account for Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has been running…
Digital political advertising has become an integral part of modern election campaigns all around the world . For the upcoming German parliamentary elections on February 23rd, I analyze data comparing digital ad spending across Germany’s 2021 and 2025 elections, focusing on overall trends, spending by party, and platform preferences. First, I zoom out to the aggregate level. Here, the data…
So far, online political microtargeting has been mainly understood as a strategic choice that advertisers can make to maximize the impact of their messaging by reaching certain audiences that are most most likely to be receptive of them. In fact, social media companies like Meta have built an entire business model around this promise. In a public outreach campaign Meta started in early 2021 called…
Digital advertising has become an integral part of political campaigning in recent years, and the 2023 Dutch provincial elections (15th March) were no exception. Political parties vied for the attention of potential voters across a range of digital platforms (including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat), with spending totaling €1.31 million in the 30 days leading up to the election Here,…
Electoral campaigns in Germany are increasingly making use of digital advertising to get their message across to voters during the 2021 German elections. As shown previously , Facebook enables advertisers to use a wide variety of targeting criteria based on age, gender, location, interests, and much more. But how common is targeting and are parties and other political actors making use of this…