Who Targets Me makes online political ads more transparent

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

For individuals
For researchers and journalists
For policy makers

How?

Browser Extension

Installed by over 100,000 people to help them learn more about the political ads they see and aid scientific research. >>

Research ad trends

Live tracking of online ad spending, targeting and content from 100k+ pages from 1000+ parties in 50+ countries. >>

Newsletter

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

Understand 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. >>

Training and Consulting

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

Featured tools and projects

Our Browser Extension

Political Ad Trends

  • Live tracking the spending, messaging and targeting of 100k+ advertisers in 50+ countries
  • Monitor change over time. Who’s up? Who’s down?
  • Dig into presidential races, referendums and local campaigns
  • Explore the data

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

  • How to stop future Trumps before you need to deplatform them

    After the events of the last week in the US, many people are demanding the “regulation” of social media. But amid that clamour… what is actually to be done? One opportunity (that happens to be the area we work on) is the reform of political ads, specifically finding ways to create a meaningful system of […] >>

  • Ad transparency standards – a technical proposal

    We really need a common standard for ad transparency. So far, the platforms have voluntarily created their own. This is welcome, but they’re all (at least partially) incomplete, formatted differently and offer different mechanisms for access. We think there should be a common standard to facilitate: – Easy discovery – Full transparency – Additional context […] >>

  • A Goldilocks Zone for political ads

    Around many stars there is a so-called “goldilocks zone” where the temperature is just right for a planet to enjoy liquid water, and (perhaps) to support life. We think political advertising on social media also has a goldilocks zone. If you allow too many ads, you give unscrupulous campaigns the ability to microtarget voters, tell […] >>

  • Covering technology in elections like it’s the weather

    It all comes from above.  During election campaigns, major parties and candidates get the vast majority of coverage. They reinforce this with paid communication – TV and social media ads – and “owned” communication – events, emails, organic social media and more. This combines to motivate the voters they want to get out, and suppress […] >>

  • How to take a “gold standard” approach to political advertising transparency and policy

    As our lives go more and more online, we must all acknowledge the key global role the internet (and more specifically, social media) plays in the conduct of politics.  To date, too little constructive action has taken place to reform the rules of democracy to account for this. Instead, interested parties hold their cards close […] >>

  • What are we to do about microtargeting?

    (This blog post is the product of a series of conversations among EU-based civil society organisations on policy options related to political ads, transparency and microtargeting. Several organisations contributed policy ideas and this post summarises them below) There’s a lot of public concern about microtargeting and the threats to individual agency and democracy that it […] >>

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