A sponsored video, a supporter sign-up form, an agency buying advertising space: behind a few seconds of political communication lies a chain of responsibilities. Since 10 October 2025, the European Union has required that chain to be clearer and voter targeting to be more tightly regulated. In September 2026, the stakes therefore extend beyond the “sponsored” label. They concern how a digital campaign is funded, produced and distributed. Here are the changes introduced by the legislation and their foreseeable consequences, without assuming outcomes that have yet to be documented.
A European framework, not a single electoral code
European Regulation 2024/900 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising addresses a simple problem: online, citizens may receive a message without understanding who is funding it or why it is being shown to them. Controversies over microtargeting, amplified by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, have exposed the risks of this opacity.
The legislation does not ban political advertising. It harmonises transparency obligations and regulates certain advertising techniques. It replaces neither the GDPR, nor the Digital Services Act, nor national rules on spending and election periods. In France, in particular, pre-existing restrictions on commercial advertising for electoral campaigning purposes continue to apply.
Its scope extends beyond advertisements explicitly asking people to vote for a candidate. A message may fall under the regulation when it is disseminated by or on behalf of a political actor, unless it is purely private or commercial. Other messages fall within its scope if they are both liable and designed to influence an election, a referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process.
Identifying political advertising becomes a professional skill
This definition also matters to businesses, trade associations and non-profit organisations. A paid campaign seeking to influence a bill may be covered, even without a party logo. Conversely, not every stance on a social issue automatically becomes political advertising: the objective, context, sponsor and means of dissemination all matter.
The regulation provides for exclusions, notably for political opinions expressed in a personal capacity and for content under editorial responsibility, subject to the stipulated conditions, including the absence of specific payment by third parties for its preparation or dissemination. A journalistic article is therefore not, in principle, equivalent to a paid advertisement.
For service providers, the practical consequence is clear: classification must take place before publication online. An agency can no longer treat a sensitive subject as merely a creative category. It must question its client, document the nature of the service and pass the necessary information to the other parties involved.
From naming the payer to tracing the campaign
The first visible change is that every political advertisement must carry a clear label. This identifies, among other things, its political nature, the sponsor and, where applicable, the entity ultimately controlling that sponsor. It must also indicate whether targeting or ad-delivery techniques are being used and provide access to a transparency notice.
This notice goes beyond a signature at the bottom of a visual. It must make clear the dissemination period, the amounts and benefits associated with the service, whether the funds come from public or private sources and, where applicable, the election or political process concerned. Information on targeting completes the picture.
The challenge is less about graphics than documentation. Information can become fragmented between a party, its authorised representative, an agency, an advertising sales house and a publisher. The regulation sets out how this information is to be collected, retained and transmitted. It also provides for a European repository of online political advertisements: traceability becomes a structural element of the system.
Personal targeting faces tight restrictions
This is the most profound change for digital campaigns. Political advertising targeting or ad-delivery techniques involving personal data are permitted only under strict conditions. In particular, the data must have been collected from the individual concerned, who must have given explicit, separate consent for political advertising.
General consent to personalised advertising is therefore insufficient. Nor does signing up for a newsletter automatically authorise the reuse of an email address to target its owner elsewhere. Importing a list of supporters into an advertising tool requires a specific assessment of how the data was collected, the consent obtained and the processing carried out.
The regulation also prohibits these techniques when they rely on profiling using the special categories of data covered by the GDPR, including political opinions, religious beliefs, health and sexual orientation. Consent is not a free pass to reconstruct electoral segments from sensitive data.
An additional safeguard applies to people known with reasonable certainty to be at least one year below the applicable voting age. These rules do not eliminate all contextual advertising. Buying placement based on the content being viewed nevertheless remains different from assigning a political profile to an individual: the technical implementation must uphold that distinction.
Platforms can choose to leave the market
The regulation does not require any service to sell political advertising. As early as November 2024, Google announced its intention to stop doing so in the Union before the new rules took effect. In July 2025, Meta announced that it would stop carrying political, electoral and social issue advertisements in the Union from October 2025.
These announced decisions illustrate a major economic effect: faced with costs and uncertainty over classification, an intermediary may prefer to close an advertising category. They do not mean that the Union prohibits ordinary political posts. Paid advertising and organic expression remain two distinct things.
For campaigns, a reallocation of budgets is therefore a credible prospect: more media relations, unsponsored content, direct communication or advertising purchases from publishers willing to provide these services. Such a shift, however, never removes the obligation to comply with the regulation, the GDPR and national electoral law.
Advertisers and agencies must review their procedures
Preparation starts with an inventory: who commissions the campaign, who pays, who holds the data and who publishes? Contracts must specify how information is to be supplied and updated, and how errors are to be handled. Creative teams must plan the required disclosures from the design stage, rather than adding them in a rush to a format that has become unreadable.
Another point requiring attention: during the three months preceding an election or referendum, the regulation restricts advertising services related to that vote for certain sponsors from third countries. Verifying the client’s identity and eligibility therefore becomes essential. Compliance is no longer solely a matter for legal counsel: sales teams, media buyers and data managers must work together.
What next? The next battle may be less about the precision of microtargeting than the quality of consent-based channels and the trust placed in those communicating. That is a prospect, not an established outcome: extensive transparency can still be difficult to understand. For campaigns, the lasting advantage will probably lie in being able to explain who is speaking, with whose money and under which rules.