This dashboard tracks political advertising spending across three major data sources in the Netherlands leading up to the 2025 parliamentary elections. Following new EU transparency regulations and subsequent political ad bans by Meta and Google, attention in the Dutch political advertising landscape has shifted again toward traditional media channels which now have to provide increased public transparency.
For social media advertising data (Meta/Google) up until the ban, see the Who Targets Me Dashboard.
Last Updated: October 30, 2025 at 09:56 CET
As of October 10, 2024, new European Union regulations on political advertising transparency came into force across all EU member states. These rules require that political advertisements are clearly labeled, disclose their financing sources and targeting methods, and prohibit the use of sensitive personal data (such as ethnicity or religion) for targeting purposes without explicit consent.
However, these regulations triggered an unexpected consequence: Major tech platforms Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and Google responded by banning political advertising across the EU, including the Netherlands. Rather than comply with the new transparency and targeting requirements, these platforms chose to limit political ads entirely, fundamentally reshaping the digital political advertising landscape for the 2025 parliamentary elections. As a Tech Policy Press piece by Sam Jeffers noted, this represents a lose-lose situation that simply gives platform algorithms more power.
In response to this evolving regulatory landscape, major Dutch media companies launched politiekereclame.nl as a centralized platform where political parties and organizations can submit transparency statements for their political advertising campaigns. This initiative aims to provide transparency even as major social media platforms withdraw from the political advertising market.
However, available datasets on political advertising diverge significantly in their scope, granularity, and coverage. This dashboard brings together three major data sources: politiekereclame.nl (industry self-regulation platform covering TV, radio, print, outdoor, and online), Ster (official public broadcasting transparency portal), and DPG Media (major Dutch media conglomerate covering print and digital), to provide the most comprehensive overview of political advertising spending in the Netherlands during this transitional period.
Powered by the
reclamerR package: an open-source toolkit for scraping Dutch political advertising data.
Total Spending by Source
About this source
politiekereclame.nl is the central platform developed by five Dutch media associations (Audify, MMA, NDP Nieuwsmedia, Outreach, and Screenforce) for EU political advertising transparency. Political advertisers submit declarations in one place for all participating media companies, covering TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, outdoor, and online advertising. It seems to be the most comprehensive repository for political advertising in the Netherlands, however it is not standardized across advertisers and also missing key information (e.g. which data and parameters were used). Here we show the total value (i.e. including pre-publishing costs). Total spend on just the distribution are: €9 885 011.
About this source
Ster is the advertising sales organization for Dutch public broadcasting (NPO). Their transparency page lists political parties and organizations that purchased advertising through television, radio, and online channels. Each entry links to downloadable PDF transparency statements filled out by advertisers, showing both total campaign spending (including pre-publishing costs) and payments specifically made to Ster.
About this source
DPG Media is a major Dutch media company operating newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms. Their transparency page lists political advertising campaigns on their print and digital channels. Each entry shows the advertiser, campaign period, spending range (brackets like "< €1,000" or "€1,001-10,000"), and estimated reach. DPG Media reports spending boundaries rather than exact amounts, with a maximum category of "> €10,001", meaning only estimates are possible. Here we calculate spending by taking the median between minimum and maximum for each bracket.
Important: These are estimates, not exact figures because politiekereclame.nl does not provide exact spending amounts per media channel. When a campaign advertises on multiple channels (e.g., TV + Radio), we estimate by dividing the total budget equally between reported channels. Out of 65 total campaigns, only 43 campaigns (66%) report which channels they used. The remaining 22 campaigns (34%) don’t specify any channels. Top 3 campaigns without channel info: D66 (€2 403 289), BBB (€400 000), JA21 (€400 000).
Important: Ster provides breakdowns with exact (preliminary) spending on each channel (Television, Radio, Online Video and Online Display) in official PDF transparency statements.