You may have seen the announcement from Meta on Friday 25th July, saying that they are “Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation”. Meta’s claim is that the new transparency legislation from the EU is too legally complex and expensive for them to implement.
It’s impossible to know at this point if this will definitely go ahead – sometimes, moves like this are a shot across the bow by Meta, to try to influence the legislators that they’re locked in battle with. Sometimes Meta will enforce changes like this, but then add loopholes, or keep extending the deadlines. It’s all very new and difficult to know for sure what will happen in October.
There is, of course, precedence for this: Google have already announced that they’ll be discontinuing political ads in the EU. Google have always done a better job though of separating political / election ads and social issue ads.
If Meta’s change does go ahead, it will obviously have big implications for charities running Meta ad campaigns. Ads promoting donations, petitions, online advocacy actions all require marking as ‘political / social’ campaigns, and will no longer be possible if Meta enforces this change.
At the moment, there’s very little we can do except monitor the situation. You definitely need to notify your senior management about this and let them know that it’s potentially coming down the line. And that if Meta makes a change like this, we won’t be able to reverse it or work around it – it’ll require a new ad strategy.
For charities based in the UK: there’s no indication as yet that UK charities will be affected by this, as it’s related to EU legislation.
I’ll monitor this situation and let you know if there’s any big new developments – sign up to the Digital Charity Lab mailing list to stay informed.
- Meta’s Newsroom: https://about.fb.com/news/
- Some interesting reading on this from digital legislation expert Liz Carolan: https://www.thebriefing.ie/meta-bans-political-ads-in-the-eu/
- Meta political ad expert Clare O’Donoghue Velikić wrote about this in The Irish Examiner: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41678339.html
- Great article from Nick Burne Digital, with suggestions for new tactics for social ads: https://www.nickburne.com/article-meta-eu-ban
- Advice from Playtpus Digital: https://www.platypusdigital.com/metas-eu-political-ad-ban-what-it-means-for-charities/