Political advertising has long been a contentious issue in Europe, and regulations surrounding it have tightened in recent years. In March 2024, the EU adopted the Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (Regulation (EU) 2024/900, known as TTPA), which will apply from October 10, 2025.
The regulation aims to increase transparency, prevent misuse, and strengthen citizens’ trust in the democratic process. It applies to all media, but its implementation is particularly challenging in digital environments compared to, for example, print or outdoor advertising. This is the first EU-level regulation to address political advertising in such detail, introducing significant obligations for both publishers and advertisers.
In practice, political ads must be clearly labelled, accompanied by information about the advertiser and funding, campaign periods, and any targeting used. All related data must also be stored for seven years in a standard EU archive to ensure transparency retroactively. During the last three months before an election, political advertising services may only be offered to EU citizens, permanently resident eligible voters in the EU, or companies operating in the EU that are not controlled by a third-country entity. In effect, this restricts funding and sponsorship rather than imposing a total ban.
In July 2025, the European Commission published guidance for implementing the regulation. It addresses how political advertising should be identified, how transparency notices should be displayed, and what due diligence obligations service providers must meet. The aim is to help advertisers, publishers, and supervisory authorities practically apply the rules clearly and straightforwardly. While the guidance is based on feedback from networks and stakeholders, many practical aspects remain open, and further clarification is expected.
Strict interpretations and measures by tech companies
For many large technology companies, political advertising represents only a marginal share of their business, which has led some of them to adopt a strict stance.
- TikTok had already introduced a global ban on paid political advertising earlier, and does not allow such content in any form of monetisation. Political content may still spread organically on the platform, but paid promotion by politicians, parties, or campaign organisations is prohibited. X has a similar policy in parts of the world, including the EU.
After the TTPA, more companies have taken action to ban political advertising, including Microsoft, Google and Meta.
- Meta will withdraw from political, electoral, and social issue advertising as of the same date, arguing that the new rules impose such strict limits on targeting and ad delivery that maintaining the service would be practically impossible.
- Microsoft will ban political ads on Microsoft Advertising starting in September 2025 as it prepares for the TTPA regulation to take effect. The company’s policy covers both election-related content and political actors, as well as issue-based ads such as campaigns on climate change, immigration policy, or taxation. Previously, political advertising has been banned on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.
- Google already had restrictions on political advertising in terms of targeting and transparency. Still, they will now suspend all political advertising in the EU at least for the time being, starting before the October 2025 deadline. The decision applies to all of Google’s ad systems, affecting both buyers and sellers. The reasons include the regulation’s broad definition of political advertising, the lack of comprehensive election data in member states, and guidance being finalised too late.
- Adform also announced in September 2025 that it will no longer support political advertising in the EU starting on 9 October, one day before the TTPA regulation takes effect. The company requires its clients to discontinue political advertising and will remove all related campaigns. Political ads are defined as, for example, advertising by parties, candidates, or on election-related issues. At the same time, civic service campaigns, such as those focused on traffic safety or public health, are exempt from the ban. Adform aims to support a democratic and regulation-compliant model for political advertising in the future, but this will require more time.
- Additionally, Equativ and ConnectAd, among others, have announced they will stop serving political ads in the EU once the TTPA takes effect.
Since political advertising is assumed to account for only a small fraction of revenue for these companies, the easiest way to minimise regulatory risk is to withdraw entirely. However, this leaves publishers partly caught in the middle because the bans do not affect the aforementioned companies' own inventory alone. The majority of publishers rely on Google’s or Microsoft’s services for their own ad serving. In this set of sweeping bans on political advertising, both have extended the bans also to cover these services.
What do the restrictions mean for publishers?
For publishers, the situation raises more questions than answers. Programmatic political advertising has never been a significant revenue stream in Europe, but under the new strict rules, it will no longer be possible at all.
This also reflects a structural gap in the programmatic ecosystem: political ads must be labelled and linked to transparency notices, yet existing standards lack built-in mechanisms to ensure consistent implementation across the chain (DSP–SSP–ad server). This problem becomes even more pronounced as Google and Microsoft, among other adtech companies, have decided to issue sweeping bans instead of declaring their intentions to add support in their services. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the publisher, but the complexity of the chain makes practical execution difficult—one reason why some ad delivery platforms have decided to withdraw completely.
Direct campaigns will also become more complicated, especially if the major ad delivery platforms in use do not reverse their bans on permitting political ads. Publishing such ads now requires processes that are not entirely new—major platforms have already had their own practices—but they are now elevated to EU-level obligations for all players.
Advertisers must provide comprehensive information, ads must be labelled appropriately, and all materials must be submitted to the EU’s standard archive within the set timeframe. Targeting may also become a larger challenge for election advertisers, as it will require explicit and separate consent, which is not currently covered by the TCF consent framework used by publishers across the EU. For local media, this can be both challenging and important, as political ad revenues may be relatively significant. However, creating a separate delivery setup solely for political campaigns may prove impractical—especially if the Commission’s future guidance further alters interpretations and obligations.
Summary: Unclear rules and uneven burden
The EU’s regulation is intended to improve transparency and prevent misuse, but in practice, the consequences often run counter to this intention. Large platforms are pulling out because political advertising represents only a negligible revenue stream for them. At the same time, local publishers are left to figure out how to meet new transparency and archiving obligations cost-effectively.
The ultimate impact will depend on how precisely the rules are clarified and whether major tech companies revise their stance. For publishers, the key question is whether a joint solution can be found to keep political ad revenues within the media, or whether the technical and compliance burden will ultimately fall on those who rely on this income the most.