Abstract
In the ongoing 2024 elections, European democracies are facing multiple challenges, including declining voter turnout, extremist factions gaining electoral ground, and various risks posed by technology platforms. This article explores the characteristics of online political advertising in Romania, focusing on the advertising budgets allocated by mainstream and extremist parties and their specific targeting strategies based on voter segmentation. The study examines multiple electoral cycles in Romania, employing a longitudinal approach to analyze the online political advertising of the mainstream and extremist Romanian parties with a significant electoral impact. Utilizing data from the Meta Ad Library Reports, the study aims to explore the scale of online political advertising expenditure, and discuss voter segmentation and its potential impact on voter mobilization. Through this lens, the paper highlights the significant role of political advertising leveraged by online platforms in modern politics and the consequent challenges to the integrity of the electoral processes. It discusses gaps in existing national and EU regulations, and argues for regulatory measures to enhance transparency and accountability in political advertising.
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Appendix A
Codebook of the variables.
Variable Name |
Data Type |
Description |
ad_archive_id |
Numeric |
A unique identifier for the advertisement. |
page_id |
Numeric |
The unique identifier of the Facebook or Instagram page that posted the advertisement. |
page_name |
String |
The name of the page that published the advertisement. |
ad_creation_time |
Date |
The date when the advertisement was created. |
ad_delivery_start_time |
Date |
The start date of the ad campaign. |
ad_delivery_stop_time |
Date |
The end date of the ad campaign. |
byline |
String |
The line indicating the sponsor of the advertisement. |
ad_creative_bodies |
String |
The main text content of the advertisement. |
ad_creative_link_titles |
String |
The title of the advertisement as it appears in the link preview. |
ad_creative_link_captions |
String |
The caption of the advertisement as it appears in the link preview. |
ad_creative_link_descriptions |
String |
The description of the advertisement as it appears in the link preview. |
impressions |
String |
The number of times the ad was on screen for the target audience, given in a range format with lower and upper bounds. |
spend |
String |
The estimated total amount of money spent on the ad, given in a range format with lower and upper bounds. |
currency |
String |
The currency in which the advertisement spending is denoted. |
demographic_distribution |
JSON |
A JSON object detailing the distribution of the ad’s impressions across different demographics, such as age and gender. |
delivery_by_region |
JSON |
A JSON object detailing the regional distribution of where the ad was shown. |
publisher_platforms |
String |
The platforms on which the ad was published, such as Facebook or Instagram. |
estimated_audience_size |
String |
An estimated range of the size of the audience that potentially saw the ad. |
languages |
String |
The language(s) in which the ad content is written. |

Political ads creation in Romania one month before the previous European Elections (April–May 2019).

Political ads creation in Romania one month before the previous Parliamentary Elections (November–December 2020).
Appendix B
Results of OLS regression on ads spending estimated each for far – right and incumbent mainstream parties.
Ads Spending |
||
Incumbent (mainstream coalition between PNL + PSD) (1) |
AUR (far – right party) (2) |
|
Platform: Facebook |
–1,378.75*** |
–380.23*** |
(29.82) |
(11.39) |
|
AUR (far-right party) |
–1,317.00*** |
|
(17.11) |
||
Incumbent (PNL + PSD: mainstream parties) |
–950.52*** |
|
(40.92) |
||
Age (25–34 years) |
234.12*** |
400.60*** |
(80.07) |
(81.69) |
|
Age (35–44 years) |
146.18*** |
211.36*** |
(54.35) |
(55.46) |
|
Age (45–54 years) |
32.37 |
97.58* |
(48.89) |
(49.89) |
|
Age (55–64 years) |
210.46** |
280.30*** |
(85.31) |
(87.06) |
|
Facebook: Incumbent |
1,339.02*** |
|
(32.17) |
||
Facebook: AUR |
386.17*** |
|
(82.44) |
||
Intercept |
2,072.78*** |
1,036.66*** |
(46.49) |
(45.32) |
|
Observations |
127,427 |
127,427 |
Adjusted R2 |
.05 |
.01 |
F Statistic (df = 7; 127419) |
1,001.22*** |
234.76*** |
Note: Standard errors are presented in parentheses; *, **, and *** denote statistical significance at the 10 %, 5 %, and 1 % confidence.
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