Google Decides Europe’s Political Ad Rules Are Too Hard to Implement at Scale
16th November 2024
Google has decided the European Union’s Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising will be so hard to comply with it’s better off not trying.
The search and ads giant on Thursday announced that it will stop serving political advertising in the EU sometime before October 2025 – when the Regulation (TTPA) comes into force.
Annette Kroeber-Riel, the big G’s veep for government affairs and public policy in Europe, wrote that the TTPA “unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms.”
“For example, the TTPA 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,” she wrote. Another concern is the “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.”