Voting on Tuesday in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee on a draft law regulating the transparency and targeting of political advertising, MEPs adopted their position by 31 in favour, none against and 9 abstentions.

Muzzling targeting strategies and making micro-targeting a thing of the past

The changes made to the Commission’s proposal require that only personal data explicitly provided for online political advertising can be used by advert providers. This creates a de facto ban on micro-targeting, a strategy that uses consumer data and demographics to identify the interests of specific individuals.

Furthermore, the committee introduced a whole host of other provisions to further regulate the broader activity of targeting, such as a blanket ban on using minors’ data.

Greater transparency

Considerable changes were made to the proposal to allow much more information to be made easily available to citizens, authorities and also journalists. An online repository containing all online political advertisements and related data would also be created.

The amended text would make it easier to obtain information on who is financing an advert, on how much was paid for it, and from where the money originated. Information will also be published on whether an advertisement has been suspended for violating the rules, on the specific groups of individuals targeted and what personal data were used for this, and the views and engagement with the advertisement….