Meta, Facebook’s parent company, will halt political ad sales and displays in the EU starting October, citing the Bloc’s upcoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) legislation. Meta expresses concerns over the law’s complexity and its impact on personalized advertising. The TTPA demands extensive transparency for political ads, including clear labeling, sponsor disclosure, and consent for data usage.
Facebook parent company Meta has announced that it will stop selling and displaying political advertisements in the European Union (EU) starting October, citing the Bloc’s incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) legislation. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company said that the requirements introduce “significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties.” The TTPA introduces “significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU”, Meta stated in a blog post.
Meta says EU’s rules are a threat to the principles of personalized advertising. Meta explained that TTPA’s “extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery” will restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences. It said that this will lead to people seeing fewer relevant ads on the company’s platforms. “Despite extensive engagement with policymakers to share these concerns, we have been left with an impossible choice: alter our services to offer an advertising product which doesn’t work for advertisers or users, without a guarantee that our solution would be viewed as compliant, or stop allowing political, electoral, and social issue ads in the EU,” the company said, noting that it is “another threat to the principles of personalized advertising.”
Adopted by the European Commission in 2024, the TTPA mandates extensive transparency for political ads. Companies selling these ads must clearly label them, disclose their sponsor, the relevant election or referendum, the ad’s cost and the targeting mechanisms used. The law also says that data collected for political ads can only be used with explicit consent and prohibits the use of sensitive personal data like racial or ethnic origin, or political opinions, for profiling. Google, another advertising behemoth, previously announced its own decision to cease selling political ads in the EU by October. Google also highlighted the “significant operational challenges and legal uncertainty” presented by the new law.
