Google stopping political ads in EU
Political online advertising is often controversial. Google has now announced that it will stop serving political advertising in the EU before EU’s new rules on political ads enter into force in October next year. Additionally, paid political promotions, where they qualify as political ads, will no longer be permitted on YouTube in the EU.
Under the new rules, political ads must be clearly labelled as such and must indicate who paid for them, how much, to which elections or referendum they are linked.
“Citizens will be able to distinguish messages that seek to shape their political views and decisions”, the EU Commission said when the rules were approved by the European Parliament and governments in the European Council.
Google is protesting saying that in the EU rules, it is too difficult to see what can be described as a political ad.
The European Union’s upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms, Google vice president Annette Kroeber-Riel writes in a blog post.
She says the EU rule “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 finalised until just months before the regulation comes into effect.”
She writes that throughout the legislative process, Google shared concerns about the potential impact and the challenges posed by some of its requirements, “but the regulation ultimately failed to provide the necessary clarity and specificity that would have permitted us to comply with its requirements.”
“We have had to make similar difficult decisions to exit political ads in other jurisdictions, including in France, Canada and Brazil, where we have not been able to comply immediately with the specific implementations required by regulations. We will share more information on the exact timing of our policy change in 2025 and will continue evaluating this decision in the future.”
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