A quick reminder for Meta advertisers in Europe: As of this week, Meta is implementing its ban on all political, electoral and social issue ads in the EU, due to incoming regulations around political advertising in the region.
Back in July, Meta explained how the coming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) provision in Europe, which requires all digital ad platforms to implement enhanced transparency measures for political ads, will make it impossible for the company to keep running ads of this type, due to more stringent rules around how user data is applied to such promotions.
In particular, TTPA regulations require that each platform gain explicit and separate consent from each user to use their data for such campaigns.
Meta says that this is not feasible at its scale, so it’s opted to halt all advertising of this type in the region.
The new regulations come into effect on Oct. 10, which means that Meta will be cutting off all EU ads in these categories this week.
As per Meta:
“Earlier this summer, we shared that Meta will no longer allow social issue, electoral or political ads in the European Union in response to the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation. Unfortunately, the TTPA introduces significant obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU, so we had to make this difficult decision.”
Meta says that the change, which will come into effect on Oct. 6 at 6pm CET, will not have any impact on ads about social issues, elections or politics served outside of the EU.
“We will continue to provide our industry-leading verification and transparency tools globally.”
Meta has long opposed EU regulation, and this is yet another example of what it sees as regulatory overreach, which will impact information flow, and in particular, the distribution of information on important political issues.
Meta has been pushing for the Trump administration to help it push back against heavy-handed regulatory approaches in Europe, but thus far, the White House hasn’t intervened to put additional pressure on the EU Commission in enforcing its laws.
But U.S. government officials have criticized European regulatory approaches, and have suggested that further action could be taken, if they view this as targeted restrictions on American businesses.
We’ll see if that comes about, but for now, Meta says that it has no choice but to cut these types of promotions, in order to align with the new law.
So no new ads in these categories for EU ad partners. Those using Meta’s API tools will need to update accordingly.
You can read more about the changes here.
