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.

What we do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Brexit effect on UK political campaign rules

The UK is starting to diverge from the GDPR. What will looser rules mean for political campaigns? >>
Ad transparency – what’s missing for 2024?

What should platforms do to increase the integrity of their political advertising systems to protect the many elections taking this year? >>
Has the DSA done anything for political ad transparency?

The EU’s Digital Services Act is a big step forward in holding platforms accountable. On ad transparency, it could have gone further. >>
Transparency needs transcripts

For researchers, processing video and images is hard. The files are large, processing them without powerful hardware is slow and, quite simply, you can’t watch them all. To make research possible, platform ad libraries should include video and audio transcripts as standard. >>
Google’s “election ads” Policy and Ad Library are a failure of transparency

New laws should mean more clarity and some common standards about what’s “in scope” for ad transparency. In the meantime, the platforms get to choose their own approach. Google’s lazy effort at political ad transparency reflects this. >>
Will TikTok’s political ad ban help Trump become president again?

TikTok’s prohibition on political advertising creates unacknowledged winners and losers. When you weigh those up, their ban seems to favour a certain Donald J. Trump. >>

Our newsletter on how political campaigns use ads, and what it all means.