We make online political ads more transparent

…with tools for individuals, data for researchers and journalists, and advocacy for better policy from platforms, regulators and governments.

For individuals
For researchers and journalists
For policy makers

What we do

Browser Extension

Our first product, running since 2017. Installed by over 100,000 people to learn more about the political ads they see. >>

Tracking ad trends

Monitoring online ad spending, targeting and content from 75,000+ advertisers from 650+ parties in 50+ countries. >>

Newsletter

Full Disclosure is our regular newsletter on what parties and candidates are doing with their digital political ads. >>

Understanding social media

Building ecologically valid studies to learn how users respond to changes in platform design, content and algorithms. >>

Policy and analysis

Developing and promoting ideas that improve trust and transparency in election campaigns in the digital age. >>

Consulting

Helping people develop their own research projects to better understand the ways technology and democracy interact. >>

Featured tools and projects

Our Browser Extension

Trends

  • Tracks the spending, messaging and targeting of 75,000+ political advertisers
  • Shows trends and leaderboards to monitor change over time
  • Dig down into presidential races, referendums and local campaigns
  • Try it out

Understanding social media

  • Allows researchers to run ecologically valid experimental studies with real content on real social media interfaces
  • Learn how users react to re-ranking, labelling, literacy interventions and exposure to different types of content
  • For quantitative and qualitative study
  • Learn more

Policy and analysis

  • Twitter’s ad library to return? Political ads in today’s EU Code of Practice on Disinformation reports

    This morning, signatories of the 2022 EU Code of Practice on Disinformation published their first reports under the new Code. The voluntary document, which was completed in June last year, signed platforms up to a range of measures designed to counter online disinformation, including commitments around improving the transparency of political advertising.  The 20+ signatories […] >>

  • Digital ‘Imprints’ are coming to the UK

    Printed election campaign materials published in the UK must contain information about who is responsible for producing them. This information is known as an ‘imprint’. These can help voters understand who is attempting to influence their political beliefs, giving additional context to campaigning material not just in the run up to an election, but between […] >>

  • Donald Trump’s return to Facebook

    Meta will reinstate Donald Trump’s accounts in the next few days. Here are some of the implications of their decision, as we see them: 1/ He never truly went away. For the last two years, Meta has allowed the Trump campaign to run ads provided they weren’t from his account or using his tone or […] >>

  • PATA – The Little Act That Could…

    The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) is a bill drafted by a bipartisan group of US Senators to increase the transparency of social media data. Initially released as a discussion draft in December 2021, and formally introduced as a bill in December 2022, PATA contains several mechanisms designed to enable greater independent scrutiny of […] >>

  • ChatGPT and the future of political ads

    With all the ChatGPT hype this week, it’s a good time to think about a prospective future for AI that has it producing deeply personalised information and communication. For political ads, a tool like ChatGPT could write and design (or film or assemble) thousands of variations of political ads based on desired topic, emotional pitch, […] >>

  • Political ad blackouts, ‘greyouts’ and dealing with ‘unaccountable information’

    Today, Meta (in the US) stops new political ads being created ahead of next Tuesday’s midterm elections. Ads will still run on Facebook and Instagram – lots of them – but they’ll have been created in the past, and won’t respond to new events that might happen before the election. We think ad blackouts are […] >>

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