Presidential election: Facebook and Instagram to ban ads in protest at EU rules
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company announced in July that it would end political, electoral, and advocacy-based advertising on its platforms in protest at the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation. Picture: Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty
A ban on political ads on the likes of Facebook will hit all three presidential campaigns from next week.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced in July that it would end political, electoral, and advocacy-based advertising on its platforms in protest at new EU rules which will be implemented in Ireland later this month. The ban itself will come into effect in the coming days.
However, all three campaigns said it was something they were aware of and planning for.
Heather Humphreys has, according to Meta's publicly available data, been by far and away the biggest spender on the platforms.
Her €12,900 spend in the last 30 days dwarfs that of Catherine Connolly's €3,700 and Jim Gavin's €2,700.
A spokesperson for the Connolly campaign said that it had "built a large organic reach and engaged Catherine's supporters online and we’re optimistic that with their help, even without advertising, we’ll be able to bring her message to a broad audience in the weeks before the election".
According to a spokesperson for the Gavin campaign, his ads have reached more than 2m people online with an overall online spend on all platforms of around €3,500.
They said that Mr Gavin's digital strategy is "targeted in order to yield higher results".
"It involves running ads in a very specific way to maximise reach and achieve the lowest possible CPM (cost per impression).
"The strategy is not built on outspending rivals.
"Ad spend does not automatically equal engagement with content or an increase in followers. The strategy will progress in the coming days with a significant roll out of key messages from Sunday’s campaign launch."
Internal Fianna Fáil tracking suggests that Mr Gavin's organic reach across platforms is ahead of Ms Connolly's, with the Fianna Fáil man finding particular success on Tiktok.
Meta has said it intends to enact the ban in response to the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation.
In a blog post in July, the company said the TTPA "introduces significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU".
"For example, the TTPA places extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery which would restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences and lead to people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms.
"It is yet another threat to the principles of personalized advertising, ignoring the benefits to advertisers and the people they want to reach.
"We believe that personalised ads are critical to a wide range of advertisers, including those engaged on campaigns to inform voters about important social issues that shape public discourse. Regulations, like the TTPA, significantly undermine our ability to offer these services, not only impacting effectiveness of advertisers’ outreach but also the ability of voters to access comprehensive information."
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