From October 10, 2025, "Regulation (EU) 2024/900 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising" applies for EU member states.
The regulation states that:
Political advertising must be clearly labelled as such and include information on who paid for it, to which election, referendum, legislative or regulatory process it is linked and whether targeting or ad-delivery techniques have been used.
Additional information providing a wider context for the political advertisement, such as information on the aggregated amounts or their origin, is provided in the transparency notice that must be included in each political advertisement or be easily retrievable from it.
Targeting or ad delivery of political advertising online is only permitted under strict conditions:
the data have to be collected from the data subject;
the data can be used only if the data subject has given explicit and separate consent for their use for political advertising;
the personal data of minors cannot be used;
special categories of personal data, such as data revealing racial or ethnic origin or political opinions, cannot be used for profiling;
the use of personal data pertaining to a data subject who is at least 1 year under the voting age established by national rules is prohibited.
All online adverts will be available in an online European repository.
A ban is imposed on political advertising coming from sponsors from outside the EU in the 3 months leading up to an election or referendum.
Read more about the regulation here.
Vitec BidTheatre is currently evaluating whether to support compliance with the directive. This means that, until further notice, political advertising towards EU countries will be disabled in BidTheatre DSP from October 10, 2025.