Political and Issue Ad Classification and Authorisation

Since Regulation (EU) 2024/900 became applicable on 10 October 2025, Google and Meta have not accepted political advertising anywhere in the European Union, and TikTok has prohibited it worldwide since 2019. For an EU advertiser the live question is therefore not how to get authorised. It is whether the campaign about to be booked is political advertising as the Regulation defines it, because if it is, no authorisation will make it run on those platforms. Why this reaches a compliance practice at all: Banks, insurers, professional bodies and employer associations run messages that concern legislation without mentioning a candidate: pension reform, a proposed levy on transactions, an amendment to employment law, a consultation response, a class action. The Regulation reaches messages liable to influence a legislative or regulatory process, not only a vote. A reputation campaign that references a bill in progress sits inside the definition. A product campaign that merely runs during a campaign period usually sits outside it. That difference is worth a written opinion before the media plan is signed rather than after a platform has classified it for you. The classification memo: We take the actual creative, the targeting brief and the flight dates, and rule each message in or out with the reasoning attached, because the reasoning is what your compliance committee and a platform reviewer will both want to see. Rulings are green, amend or drop. Amend names the element that makes the message political, which is normally the call to action or a reference to a pending measure, and almost never the idea itself. If it is political: Then the plan changes rather than the paperwork. Owned and earned channels, press under ordinary publishing rules, and where a paid route still exists, the sponsor identification, the transparency notice and the record-keeping the Regulation places on the sponsor as well as the publisher. Sponsors established outside the Union are barred in the three months before a vote, which catches EU subsidiaries funded by a non-EU parent more often than anyone expects it to. Outside the Union: Where you advertise in the United States or the United Kingdom, authorisation work is real and we do it: Google election ads verification with organisation documents and in-ad disclosure, Meta authorisation with identity confirmation and a paid-for-by disclaimer attached to the entity that actually paid, and ad library entries written in the knowledge that a journalist will read them. A United States disclaimer is not a template for a United Kingdom one and we do not treat it as one. Italy, during a campaign period: Legge 28/2000 and the AGCOM resolutions issued for each election govern what may be said and when, and the silence period closes paid political messaging before polling. Corporate advertisers are caught by scheduling rather than by content: a campaign booked months earlier, still running through polling day, carrying a message that became political while it sat in the calendar. What we refuse: We do not route a campaign through a trade association, a foundation or an employee group to separate the message from the sponsor who paid for it. We do not advise on phrasing that gets a political message past an automated classifier. We do not act for foreign-funded advocacy aimed at an EU electorate, whatever the intermediary structure. Not for: Parties, candidates and campaign committees. We act for regulated commercial advertisers whose message has come close to a line drawn for someone else. Also not for anyone who has already booked the media and now wants a memo that says yes; at that point the memo is worth nothing to you and our name is on it.