For Western countries, it is not surprising to see advertisements featuring political content when election time approaches. If decades before it was only seen on television, in this internet age, it can also be shown on websites and various online services.
The European Union will introduce a new act called the Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) in October 2025 which will further tighten the laws regarding political advertising in the region.
According to Google, the introduction of the TTPA will introduce additional operational difficulties and legal uncertainty about how platforms such as Google can display political ads in those countries.
Until now, Google has made sure that any party that wants to display ads related to politics and elections has to verify the identity of the advertiser, and the disclosure in the ad itself about who paid for it for public knowledge.
With the TTPA, the definition of "political ads" is seen to be expanded and this will make it more difficult for Google to show ads such as social awareness for example on their platforms due to the broader definition.
Because of this, Google has just announced the decision to no longer display any "political ads" in the region, including through the Google Ads platform or on their other service platforms such as GMail and YouTube, including paid political ads.
This decision will come into effect before the TTPA is introduced in October next year.
The decision to stop broadcasting political ads is nothing new. Previously, Google had already stopped it in countries such as France, Canada and Brazil due to restrictions by the governments of those countries.
Google says it regrets this because political ads are said to be one of the ways for people to get information related to elections, such as information on individuals who are running and policies that want to be highlighted.