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The price of (un)regulation: Tracing the flow of political advertising budgets and voter targeting across online platforms in Romanian elections

  • Andreea Stancea EMAIL logo and Madalina Botan
Published/Copyright: April 2, 2025
Communications
From the journal Communications

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

Table A1:

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.

Figure A1: Political ads creation in Romania one month before the previous European Elections (April–May 2019).
Figure A1:

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

Figure A2: Political ads creation in Romania one month before the previous Parliamentary Elections (November–December 2020).
Figure A2:

Political ads creation in Romania one month before the previous Parliamentary Elections (November–December 2020).

Appendix B

Table B1:

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.

Published Online: 2025-04-02

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