Guide to running social issue, electoral or political ads
Learn how to get authorized to run issue or political ads in three steps.
Transparency and authenticity for issue and political ads
As part of our broader commitment to election integrity, advertisers who run ads about social issues, elections or politics have to get authorized and include a disclaimer on their ads.
We do this to enable healthy discourse, help prevent interference in elections and to meet the commitments we made to increase transparency and authenticity.
Getting authorized
Follow the steps and links below to get authorized to run your social issue, electoral or political ads.
In countries where it is required, you’ll need authorization to run ads about social issues, elections or politics. Specifically that’s ads that are:
- Made by, on behalf of, or about a candidate for public office, a political figure, a political party, a political action committee or advocates for the outcome of an election to public office
- About social issues in any place where the ad is being placed
- About any election, referendum or ballot initiative, including "go out and vote" or election campaigns
- Regulated as political advertising
- Note: Starting early October 2025, in response to the European Union’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, Meta will no longer allow social issue, electoral, or political ads in the EU. Learn more.
Step one: Verify your identity and location
Step two: Create and add disclaimers to your account
For transparency, all social issues, elections or political ads need to have a "Paid for by" disclaimer from the advertiser. This is compulsory in some countries and voluntary in others.
Step three: Create your ad campaign
To start running your ads you must be an ad account administrator or ad account advertiser and have completed the identity and location confirmation in step one. A Page manager (whether you or someone else) must have also completed linking the ad accounts.
To start, select “I'm creating a campaign for ads in a special ad category.” Then choose the ad category “social issues, elections or politics.” If you’re not authorized, you’ll be prompted to complete the process.
Starting January 11 2024, advertisers must disclose whenever an ad about social issues, elections or politics contains a photorealistic image, video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered in certain cases.
Advertisers running these ads do not need to disclose when content is digitally created or altered in ways that are inconsequential or immaterial to the claim, assertion, or issue raised in the ad. Learn more in this Help Center article.
When you run ads about social issues, elections or politics, you'll only be able to target the country where you’ve completed the authorization process.
Advertisers can still run ads about social issues, elections or politics in multiple countries if a local representative in each country completes the authorization process for that country, and runs ads targeted only to that country.
Reviewing ads categorized as social issues, elections or politics can take us up to 72 hours.
Meta Ad Library
The Ad Library is our most comprehensive ads transparency surface, providing a searchable view of ads across Meta technologies. It helps make advertising transparent by giving people more information about the ads they see. All ads about social issues, elections or politics, both active and inactive, are stored for seven years.
