In this article, you will learn which conditions have to be fulfilled for the authorisation or placement of political advertisements on Facebook, how this verification takes place and how the authentication is carried out. In the course of the 2019 European elections, Facebook has sent a strong signal against election manipulation. This affects all actors from politics and society who political advertising on the Facebook and Instagram platforms.
As a result of the changes, it is now stipulated that every user must now verify their profile and also create a disclaimer for the respective Facebook page. For the verification, it is necessary to verify one's own identity and to sign a notarised attested form upload.
The new process requires that a user can only be verified for one country, from which the following factors must originate:
Political ads on Facebook
- Country of authorisation at user level
- Self-declared place of residence in the user profile
- Target group in the country of authorisation
- Address of the advertisement account for the country of authorisation
- Means of payment for the country of authorisation
In addition, you can only place political advertisements in the country in which you are registered and no longer across countries. Anyone who wants to place political advertisements must first go through an authorisation process and activate a two-stage authentication. Afterwards, users must also mark the political advertising as such.
Verification of the identity of the Facebook profile
After the two-factor authentication has been successfully completed, it is now necessary to verify one's own identity. Facebook offers numerous documents for this purpose, such as your passport or driving licence. Alternatively, you can download a form from Facebook and have it notarised. The advantage here is that you do not have to upload any personal documents directly to Facebook.
Subsequently there is the possibility , this To have the form notarised and upload it directly to Facebook. Facebook deletes the data directly from the database after 30 days. Once this step has been completed, you have to wait 48 hours for Facebook to check your identity. You will then receive a notification and, if the verification is successful, you are now a political advertiser on the platform.
Online authentication of the form
Once you have downloaded the form from Facebook and filled it out, you must have it notarised. This can be done at one of our partner notaries. The online appointments are available at our Partner notaries on weekdays between 7 and 9 pm available at any time. The process of online notarisation takes place in a Videocall will take place. For this, it is necessary to register before the appointment on the notarity web platform register and verify your identity. This takes about 15 minutes. The only thing you need is a valid Identity card or passport and a smartphone.
Disclaimer for political advertising
Political advertising must be marked as such for users. For this purpose, the profile must be linked to an advertising account. Here, it must be stated who is financing the political advertising that is now being placed. Since the data is publicly accessible, the details should be kept professional and ideally those of the party should be given, but the user can also enter their own personal data. Once all the data has been entered and confirmed, it must be sent again and checked by Facebook. Now one has a new selection option in the Business Manager on the advertisement level and can mark political advertisements as such. The Business Manager offers the advantage that it plays out the advertisements much more cost-efficiently and the focus can be placed much more strongly on the actual target group.
Difference to normal advertising on Facebook
One difference to normal advertising is that the ads are now clearly marked as being related to politically or socially relevant topics. Moreover, Facebook does not delete the data from the Facebook advertising library, but they remain in the Facebook advertising library for 7 years. In addition, in the case of political advertising, one receives precise insights into the playout (impressions, age, gender, budget and also location) of the advertisement.
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