Political ads unbanned on Tiktok in time for next year's US midterms? www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...

Our ideas for improving the integrity of UK elections got a shout out in @petergeoghegan.bsky.social's latest "Democracy for Sale" newsletter: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/labours-fo...

Not exactly a "Who Targets Me Wrapped", but a bit of a round up of what we've been working on over the last few months of 2025 (and are looking forward to in 2026): fulldisclosure.whotargets.me/p/who-target...

Not exactly a "Who Targets Me Wrapped", but a bit of a round up of what we've been working on over the last few months of 2025 (and are looking forward to in 2026): fulldisclosure.whotargets.me/p/who-target...

Democracy depends on trust. The UK’s current campaign rules struggle with opaque money, global digital reach, and outdated regulation. Here's 20 policy ideas for the forthcoming Elections Bill that would restore public confidence before the next election. whotargets.me/en/restoring...

"The ten most surprising facts from the 2024 election revealed" (includes one of our charts, albeit uncredited, for fact #5). theconversation.com/the-ten-most...

Rival politicians demand that ministers are sacked all the time, but this ad from the Conservatives is a bit different, as it asks voters/supporters to sign a petition calling for Rachel Reeves to go. It's not a tactic we remember seeing before.

Rupert Lowe's new "Great Yarmouth First" party is running ads (in Great Yarmouth) highlighting a poll of 121 residents that puts him miles ahead of his opponents (for an election that's still several years away).

The linked article is worth a read, as it explains well the complexities of UK electoral spending rules and the very blurry distinction between national and local spending. Once you've done that, read on...

X is clearly in breach in all of these areas. There's really no substantive counterargument they can make.

"For a platform that everybody claims to have quit, Facebook is astonishingly resilient. A whopping 71 percent of American adults still use the site." www.theverge.com/news/832132/...

Large donations come in, ads start to pour out (about £35k's worth on Facebook in the last seven days, plus all the ones they ran across newspapers a week ago).

We track ~45,000 online political advertisers in the US every day. Sign up and check out all the data here: trends.whotargets.me/reports/d43e...

Interesting read about the practicalities, for an agency and ad provider, of compliance with the new EU regulations on political ads: advocate-digital.com/blog/the-new...

Loads of fake/inauthentic Facebook ads using RFK to sell quack/dodgy pills at the moment.

Dutch Nazis are advertising on Instagram, despite Meta's "ban" on political ads in the EU. Meta and Google's decision to stop political ads in Europe was (as predicted) a bad one, that favours the extremists and foreign influence campaigns who don't care about the "rules".

Kemi Badenoch has ascended to the top of the UK online political ad charts over the last month. In that time, she spent £26k on Meta ads promoting her Facebook page, outspending Keir Starmer's account tenfold. Explore the data here: trends.whotargets.me/reports/7e7c...

"YouTube’s Right-Wing Stars Fuel Boom in Politically Charged Ads" www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

When Martin Wolf (FT commentator and must-read for the global jetset policy class) says it's time Meta compensated users for fraud originating on their services, you've got an idea that will only gain more traction. www.ft.com/content/4560...

While all the other websites aren't working, explore a world of political ad data here: trends.whotargets.me/reports

Now up to around £20,000 in the last three weeks on these ads. Weirdly, her page appears to now have fewer followers (155k) than she did when they started running this campaign.

Here's a blog post on the changes we've made (and what we want to do next): whotargets.me/en/changes-t...

After many months work, we launched a major new version of our Trends political ad tracking platform this morning. Take a look (and let us know your feedback - we'd love to hear from you): trends.whotargets.me/reports

After many months work, we launched a major new version of our Trends political ad tracking platform this morning. Take a look (and let us know your feedback - we'd love to hear from you): trends.whotargets.me/reports

Meta and Washington (the state, not DC) are in court, battling out whether the company violated state-level political ad transparency rules. courthousenews.com/meta-fights-...

Kemi Badenoch is currently spending around £1,000 a day on ads asking people to like/follow her on Facebook. She currently has 183k followers (predecessors Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have 1.1M and 2.3M respectively, though Liz Truss only 117k).

This piece suggests Meta is dragging its heels on reducing the (very large) number of scam ads on its services because they're concerned it will materially hurt revenue (the article estimates they make as much as $16bn a year from scam ads) www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Digital political ad spending in the US has crept up over the last two weeks, ahead of tomorrow's elections. Last year the peak day (Oct 30) saw almost $25m of political ads on Meta and Google. This year the peak spend is $3.8m (so far).

Research from Hungarian fact-checkers Lakmusz shows how Orban-aligned political actors are circumventing Meta's "ban" on political ads in the EU (in Hungarian, but auto-translates well): lakmusz.hu/2025/10/28/s...

Reform actually struggled with this in GE2024, over-spending in places they didn't ultimately win, and not spending at all in at least one seat they did. The jump from trying to win <5 seats to trying to win ~50 is a difficult strategic question.

This is quite different to last year's General Election, where they put a lot of money in, albeit to a small number of target seats. The challenge will be, as their appeal broadens, can they find the right places to invest?

One of the interesting things about the growth of the Green Party (particularly their membership) in the UK over the last several months is that it's happened (no pun intended) organically. They've barely spent anything on digital ads, and nothing at all from their main party accounts.

One of the interesting things about the growth of the Green Party (particularly their membership) in the UK over the last several months is that it's happened (no pun intended) organically. They've barely spent anything on digital ads, and nothing at all from their main party accounts.

Labour launched a new ad including a clip of Sarah Pochin's racist comments on black and asian people in TV ads, arguing Reform represents "division and grievance". Ad here: www.facebook.com/ads/library/...

New Tory digital ad campaign, going after Labour on (expected) tax rises.

Cuomo vs. Mamdani vs. Silwa digital ad spend (Google + Meta) over the last month. We've included the PACs supporting their candidacies (if we didn't, Andrew Cuomo would have spent <$1k - there's almost no positive advertising in his own name).

This is the data from the last month that social media ads were available to Dutch parties (ending Oct 4th). It can't tell you much about campaign effectiveness, but perhaps it does show that D66 and FvD were confident about improving their positions.

We've a new piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on the decision by Meta and Google to ban political, social and issue-based ads in the European Union. It's a seismic shift for European campaigning, but there won't be any winners: www.techpolicy.press/meta-and-goo...

We've a new piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on the decision by Meta and Google to ban political, social and issue-based ads in the European Union. It's a seismic shift for European campaigning, but there won't be any winners: www.techpolicy.press/meta-and-goo...

Reform running ads calling on people to sign a petition against local elections in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, East and West Sussex and Hampshire being postponed next year. So far, £2.5k spent, 500k people reached, 75k signatures. But there are two sides to this story...

Report on how the platform political ad bans boost far-right Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Good to see our dashboards and data used by the always-excellent Expert Forum in their analysis of political ads and finance during the Romanian presidential election campaign earlier this year: expertforum.ro/publicitatea...

Article on a single piece of attack content being pushed by one of the current Irish presidential election campaigns. With no ads to buy, they're getting aggressive to try and find some algorithmic juice. And it doesn't really seem to work. www.thebriefing.ie/fine-gaels-a...

This Facebook ad, from Reform's candidate ahead of next week's Caerphilly Senedd by-election, is potentially misleading (regardless of the result, Labour will hold the Westminster seat).

Check out Campaign Tracker NL, looking at the use of AI in the Dutch election campaign (and here are some particularly egregious examples from Geert Wilders' PVV and aligned pages) www.campaigntracker.nl/explore/

For years, Google defined "political ads" so narrowly as to be almost useless. The least they could do was make ads clearly designed to persuade people of a political view maximally transparent and accountable. They never did. A complete failure on their part. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

The new edition of @indicator.media is out, on the topic of ad libraries, and featuring our take on recent changes in the EU. indicator.media/p/the-indica...

A few notes on recent UK political ad spending: - Tory spend is high post-conference (i.e. over the last week), but lower than through the late summer - Reform spending has dropped off after a busy summer - Labour has YouTube to itself - Labour spends nearly 2x more than others

The Conservatives are running a number of new digital ads promoting ideas announced at their conference - leaving the ECHR, abolishing stamp duty, cutting tax by £5,000 for first jobs all getting an airing. www.facebook.com/ads/library/...