The Silence of the Ads: What’s next for political campaigns after the EU ban?
Clare O'Donoghue Velikić in conversation with Viktor Mák
Tuesday 16 September | 15:00 CEST | Zoom
Description
In the early days of digital campaigning, social media was celebrated as a democratic force, enabling movements like Obama’s campaign and the Arab Spring to gain momentum. But the risks soon became clear, through scandals like Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, and Trump’s 2016 campaign. This pushed platforms—such as Facebook—to create complex verification and transparency systems for political ads, as a means of offering at least some protection against misuse.
Now, with the EU’s new Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation coming into effect in October 2025, the game is changing. Both Google and Meta have announced they will withdraw political ads from the EU market, citing an overly cumbersome regulatory burden that outweighs the revenues such ads bring.
Without regulated, transparent advertising, legitimate political advertisers will have to find alternative ways of connecting with the public. Far-right actors and disinformation networks, meanwhile, may benefit through the unscrupulous use of unregulated methods to reach users.
With the shutting down of this channel to reach voters in regulated ways, what does the future hold for digital political campaigning? How should progressive political parties and campaigners respond, with the odds now seemingly stacked against them? This conversation between political ad expert Clare O'Donoghue Velikić and ECDA Co-Director Viktor Mák will explore the significance of the changes and discuss which strategies progressive political actors should now pivot towards.
Speaker: Clare O'Donoghue Velikić, Founder and Director of ODV Digital
Clare O’Donoghue Velikić is a digital consultant and strategist at the forefront of progressive campaigning. She is the Founder and Director of ODV Digital, a Dublin-based boutique agency which supports political parties, semi-states and non-profits across Europe and the United States. Through ODV Digital, Clare has helped to win elections and referenda around the world, deliver ambitious performance goals and transform organisations through a sharp focus on audiences, objectives and world-class digital communication strategy.
