We want every UK voter to know who is paying to target them online during elections and referendums.

The amount of money spent on digital advertising is increasing with every election. But electoral law was written long before campaigning went digital.

We’re working with the UK’s governments, other regulators and social media companies to make sure campaigning online is transparent and truthful.

The new requirements for campaigners to include digital imprints on campaign material online is a positive step, but more needs to be done.

Changes we want to see

Voters need social media companies to have online databases of political ads. These should provide meaningful transparency and should follow the UK’s rules for elections and referendums.
We want the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments to change the law so that we have:

  • better rules about how spending on digital election ads is reported to us, so that we can make sure campaigners follow the rules
  • bigger fines, if campaigners break the rules
  • stronger powers so we’ve got the right tools to regulate new ways of campaigning, like on social media channels or using online payment systems for campaign donations

What's happening now

From November 2023, campaigners will be required to include imprints on their digital political campaign material. This means that many types of digital material such as social media adverts, tweets and posts, will require an imprint. This is the same requirement as for physical campaign material, like leaflets and letters.

Digital imprint rules are already in place for some elections and referendums in Scotland.

Learn more about digital imprints

Social media companies

We meet with social media companies, including Meta, Google, Snap, Twitter and Tik Tok, to discuss how election advertising can be made more transparent on their platforms.

We also use the ad libraries made available by some of the companies to monitor who campaigns online during elections.

Report: the rise of digital campaigning

In 2018, we wrote a report about the rise of digital campaigning in the UK. We made recommendations to government to improve transparency of digital campaigning and are currently reviewing our policies in this area.