Google to stop showing political ads, paid YouTube promotions in the EU next year

What you need to know

• Google says the European Union's upcoming regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) presents "new operational challenges and legal uncertainties."
• Ahead of the TTPA taking effect in October 2025, Google will pull political ads and prohibit paid political YouTube promotions in the EU beforehand.
• Google already made similar moves regarding political advertising in Brazil, Canada, and France following the introduction of new regulations.

Google will stop serving political advertisements to users in the European Union ahead of new regulations taking effect in October 2025, the company announced in a blog post Thursday, Nov. 14. Google says the EU's upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) introduces "new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms." As such, it is pulling political ads from the region altogether, and paid political YouTube promotions will be disallowed as well.

According to the European Union, there are three main aspects of the TTPA. First, every political advertisement must have transparency labels that are easily accessible. These labels must clearly explain the advertisement's "sponsor, the election or referendum to which they are linked, the amounts paid, and any use of targeting techniques."

Additionally, the TTPA's regulation will significantly restrict the types of targeted advertising that can be used for political content, and when they can be used. The person seeing the ads must have given "explicit and separate consent" for not only the data's collection, but its collection and use specifically for the purposes of political targeted advertising. Some types of data, like racial or ethnic origin and political opinions, cannot be used for targeting at all.

Finally, the TTPA will ban third-country sponsors from political advertising three months before an election or referendum in the EU.

Google takes exception with the scope of the TTPA and some of the regulation's specifics, starting with the definition of a political advertisement itself.

"The TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale," said Annette Kroeber-Riel, Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy for Europe, in the blog post. "There is also a lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States. And key technical guidance may not be finalized until just months before the regulation comes into effect."

Those are the company's reasons for ending political advertising in the EU, including a ban on paid political YouTube promotions. Google says the measures will take effect sometime in 2025, and will share more information later. It adds that the company has already taken similar steps in Canada, Brazil, and France following regulation.