6 Months of the TTPA: What We Got Right (and What We Got Wrong)

Six months ago, the new Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulations rewrote the playbook for political ads in Europe. I’ve written about Electica’s experiences to date here and here as the only organization that dove headfirst into TTPA-compliance across the EU. Now that we’re six months into the brave new world, it’s a good time to share an update about what we’re learning.

In the digital ads business, I’m very conscious that we’re essentially selling trust: You spend a budget with us, we deliver you data in return. Since I want to build sustainable partnerships with our clients, selling trust means we need to be transparent about how ad performance is changing in Europe, to give our partners the confidence to spend their budgets as effectively as possible.

While our self-serve ads platform Advocate is fully TTPA-compliant and open for business, TTPA means that European campaigners still need to adapt their work. Here are some of our key takeaways so far:

Takeaway 1: Ads Take Longer to Launch

Pre-TTPA, we could launch ads on Advocate in 24 hours or less. Now, the window has shifted to 3-5 days. The delay is driven by multiple factors:

• Compliance Complexity: Our team has to navigate through more rigorous verification steps.
• Public Ad Libraries: Gathering and formatting the required transparency data means spending more time collecting details about our clients before we can launch.
• Hard-Coding Disclaimers: In many cases, we now have to hard-code disclaimer details directly into creative assets. This takes some time to turn around.
• Creative Approvals: We used to be able to get ad creative approved in 1-2 days. Now, it can take several days to get ads approved before they will start running.

Even in the new TTPA reality, we still strive for the fastest turnaround possible. However, we recommend setting up your campaigns a full week before you want ads live.

Takeaway 2: Your Ads Are Going to Serve on A Lot of Apps

As I wrote in an earlier update, a lot of our early inventory suppliers are vendors with in-app inventory. That’s still the case, though we’re getting closer every day to bringing more premium, web-based inventory on board. Signing new deals with publishers is taking longer than I’d like, but we’re getting there.

For now, the in-app inventory’s performance differs from historic programmatic ad metrics. While average Click Through Rates (CTRs) are typically 1-2%, some gaming apps are seeing CTRs in the double digits because of “rewarded placements.” These are placements where the user can’t scroll past a video, but instead has to either watch the whole thing or click on it (or click an “x” to close it) before they can get back to their game.

Some examples include:

• Users clicking a survey to earn more “lives” in a game.
• Players interacting with an ad to skip a “wait” timer.
• Engaging with an ad to unlock premium content for free.

The result is a mixed bag: A higher number of people are engaging genuinely with ads, but there are a lot more likely accidental clicks from people trying to just keep playing their game.

Because rewarded placements can artificially inflate CTRs, we recommend taking a more hands-on approach to optimization. Monitor performance closely, especially in the first few days after launch, and add manual exclusions for certain apps that seem suspiciously high or don’t fit your goals. That will make sure your budget works as hard as possible, and you capture clicks from more users.

Takeaway 3: Volume and Variety Are Crucial

One 30 second 16:9 size for each video used to be enough to run a decent video ad campaign. But with less inventory available, you’ll need more creative variations (and specifically, multiple video sizes!) to scale a campaign.

We recommend having at least three of the following sizes of video or display assets (and ideally 5 or 6), from most to least important:

• Priority sizes for video ads:
  • 320×480
  • 300×250
  • 480×320
  • 640×480
  • 1920×1080 (note: required for some specific in-app placements)
  • 1080×1920
• Priority sizes for display ads:
  • 300×250 (mobile, desktop, tablet)
  • 320×50 (mobile)
  • 300×50 (mobile)
  • 728×90 (mobile, desktop, tablet)
  • 300×600 (mobile, desktop, tablet)
  • 970×250 (desktop, tablet)

Across all sizes, we still recommend 30 second videos as standard, and if you really need to pare down to minimum viable, we recommend at the absolute minimum having at least one 16:9 (horizontal) and one 9:16 (vertical) version. Without these sizes, campaigns seem to have real trouble scaling and reaching the voters they want to target.

Takeaway 4: Reach is Down, and Smaller Geographies are Harder to Target

Until we conclude agreements with a few more ad inventory suppliers, highly-localized campaigns may struggle. If your targeting is very tight (one town or a handful of postal codes), you might actually run out of purchasable ad inventory. It’s still great to have some people see the ads even if you’re not reaching everyone, but we’ve seen it limit some campaigns’ ability to spend their whole budgets. We know this can be disappointing (as you could have re-allocated those funds elsewhere!).

Practically, broader, national, or regional campaigns have had an easier time reaching their audiences effectively. They might reach fewer people than they would have a year ago, but there’s still enough people out there playing games and scrolling on their phones to have an impact. If you’re considering a hyper-targeted campaign, we recommend running a small test budget before committing large budgets and monitoring performance closely. Be ready to broaden targeting (if possible) or re-allocate funds if the campaign stalls.

What This Means for Campaigners

As digital campaigning evolves, it requires more nuance and closer partnership. While Electica is working to bring better, higher-quality supply partners online every day, the immediate reality demands:

Because we’re dealing with a more limited supply of inventory, certain creative channels and/or sizes have been limited.

• Earlier Planning: Starting your compliance and creative process in advance.
• Asset Variations: Building more creative assets than you think you need.
• Active Monitoring: Advocate users should stay highly involved in monitoring domain performance alongside our team.

As always, we’re here to help. If you’re a progressive-aligned campaign, vendor or organization that’s been testing other ways to advertise in the post-TTPA world, please get in touch! We’d love to compare notes. And if you’re an organization who needs some support getting your post-TTPA ads up and running, don’t hesitate to give us a call.