Google has announced that will stop showing political campaign ads in the European Union, in order to respond to the “operational and legal uncertainties” which presents the next European Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA, for its acronym in English).
The technology giant has some measures designed to support the user security and promote transparency in relation to electoral advertising programs. For example, since 2019, it requires EU election advertisers to verify their identity in order to publish election advertising campaigns and indicate who paid for each ad.
More recently, Google also introduced a feature that automatically indicates whether political advertising contains elements created synthetically or have been manipulated with Artificial Intelligence (AI), to inform users of this practice.
Despite these measures designed to offer greater transparency regarding political ads on their services, Google has announced that will stop showing political ads for users in the European Union, in response to the “operational challenges” presented by the upcoming TTPA regulation.
This regulation, which aims to prevent electoral interference and help voters make informed decisions, It will come into force in October 2025. But, as Google explained in a statement on its blog, it will introduce “important legal uncertainties” for advertisers and political platforms.
This is due to issues such as the fact that, according to the technology company, the TTPA offers a definition of advertising “so broad that could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues,” making it difficult to identify what types of campaigns and political content can be reliably served on a large scale.
Likewise, he has also pointed out that there is “a lack of reliable electoral data” that allow for the “consistent and precise” identification of all advertisements related to elections in the EU, whether local, regional or national.
Google shared his concerns about the “possible impact” of the TTPA and the challenges that some of its requirements posed throughout the legislative process. However, finally, the regulation “did not provide the necessary clarity and specificity“in order to comply with the established standards.
As a result, given that key technical guidelines may not be determined until a few months before the regulation comes into force, Google has announced that will stop offering political advertising in the EU.
That is, the technology company will stop sharing political campaign ads with EU users before October 2025. This includes those paid promotions that are classified as political advertisements under the TTPA, designed to be published in YouTube.
With all this, he has stated that, although political advertisements are “a valuable resource for voters to find information and for the candidates to share their message,” regret having to take this measurein order to comply with European regulations.
However, they have indicated that they will share more information about the exact timing of their policy change in 2025, and they will continue to evaluate this decision “in the future.”
Likewise, he has stressed that will continue to invest on the people, policies, technology, products and partnerships “necessary to display credible information”, as well as address “misinformation and harmful content” in all its services.
It is not the first time that Google has left out political ads in a region. As he recalled, the implementation of similar regulations that they have not been able to fulfill in France, Canada and Brazilmade the technology company take this measure and withdraw political advertising in said jurisdictions.