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The impending regulations from the European Union (EU) regarding political advertising messages could have repercussions for brands that risk their marketing messages getting caught up under the loose—and overlapping—definitions, industry bodies have warned.
The EU is in the process of drafting regulations around political communications. The proposals are expected to be agreed early next year and to become law by 2024, ahead of the next European Parliament elections.
The new regulations will have a direct impact on major tech platforms such as Facebook and Google, as well as local political parties, who will be forced to reveal details on how they target voters. The definition of what constitutes political advertising in the impending EU’s policy will be pivotal and one brands and publishers will need to be cautious of in order to avoid their messaging falling under the new rules.
However, industry bodies the IAB Europe and The Center for Data Innovation have highlighted concerns around the phrasing of elements of the proposal. The trade groups are concerned specifically with the clarity on what constitutes political advertising, as well as warning that they potentially overlap with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which already has legally binding definitions on ad targeting. Were these definitions to differ, advertisers would need guidance to avoid inadvertently flouting regulations.
The new regulations will apply to formats from banner ads to videos across the EU. And there’s a lot at stake: The estimated size of the online political advertising market in Europe was up to €100 million in 2019, the EU’s Initial Appraisal impact assessment reported.
The latest meeting on the definitions will be held in Brussels on the evening of Sept. 5 by The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).
Ahead of that meeting, Greg Mroczkowski, director for public policy for IAB Europe, told Adweek that it was still “unclear” how the regulation of ad delivery and ad targeting concepts would interact. How these new regulations would impact publishers and third-party tech providers is also uncertain.
“Small and independent publishers will often have limited or no technical capabilities of handling ad-related data processing, including for contextual ads,” he said.
Mroczkowski added IAB Europe did not support new definitions around subsets of “personal data”—and that the proposals would “perpetuate legal uncertainty,” considering there already exists a “universally accepted” definition of personal data through GDPR.
Instead, the regulation for political ad distribution is a “proposed prohibition,” Mroczkowski said, adding that it should be more closely aligned with the interpreted guidance of each EU member state’s own Data Protection Authorities (DPAs).
The current proposals offer definitions such as, “This Regulation shall apply to political advertising sponsored, prepared, placed, promoted, published or disseminated in the Union, or directed to individuals in one or several Member States, irrespective of the place of establishment of the sponsor or the advertising services provider, and irrespective of the means used.”
Another definition states: “Political content expressed, under the editorial responsibility of a service provider, in the programmes of audio-visual media, published in printed or in online media shall not be considered to be political advertising when it is prepared, placed, promoted, published or disseminated without any form of remuneration from a third party.”
Writing in response to the proposals in June, Benjamin Mueller, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, said they went “a long way to ensuring that such forms of speech” would be appropriately regulated to allow citizens to distinguish who was sending political messaging. Yet he warned that a definition of the term “political advertising” needed to be drafted to avoid “overlapping” with commercial ads, whose marketing messaging could unintentionally be classed as political depending on the final phraseology—bringing it under the regulations.
“More work needs to be done in designing the law so that it creates the proper incentives for all actors in the advertising ecosystem to submit truthful and accurate information—otherwise, the law will fall short of its goal of creating fair and transparent rules for all who engage in political ads,” Mueller wrote.
In recent weeks, a group of Estonian politicians has also stated their opposition to any proposed ban on political ads. In May, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) called for amendments to be made.
