Google’s political ad library is missing paid messaging from prominent organisations trying to influence the vote over the Indigenous voice to parliament, limiting transparency around their efforts before the referendum.
Google’s political ad database includes information such as how much the advertiser paid for reach, how many times an ad was shown and details such as the age, gender and location of people whom the ad is targeting. Google does not reveal this level of detail for ads not classified as political.
Several ads about the voice from the Falun Gong-aligned website the Australian Epoch Times, including one that asked “Is Communism Behind ‘The Voice’?”, were not included in the political database, meaning it’s unclear who they were aimed to reach and how much was spent.
A YouTube ad from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a libertarian thinktank, was also not included in the political library, despite it having other items listed by Google. The video features an interview with a young Indigenous man about why he believed the voice was setting Indigenous people up for a “future of failure”.
Versions of the same video were categorised as an issue- or political-based ad on Facebook, revealing up to $798 was spent to reach people across Australia.
Sponsored posts from Oxfam Australia that promoted the organisation’s support of a yes vote were also not included in Google’s political ad section. On Facebook, in contrast, Oxfam ads about a pro-voice event were listed as issue-based or political, revealing the organisation may have spent up to $4,299 promoting the panel.
Other ads regarding the referendum did not seem to appear in the library at all, such as a message in support of the voice from the Indigenous Desert Alliance (IDA).
Due to how specific online ad targeting is – campaigns are often run by location, age and interests, among other demographic characteristics – it can be very difficult to track political advertising and potential misinformation.
Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication at Queensland University of Technology, is part of a team that researches social media advertising. He is frustrated with Google’s approach to disclosures.
“Anything we find is the tip of the iceberg,” he said of ads missing from Google’s transparency tool. “It’s below bare minimum in what you would want for transparency in advertising.”
Google declined to comment on whether the ads found by Guardian Australia were properly categorised.
“Ads and accounts on our platforms are required to comply with our advertising guidelines and we have mechanisms in place to ensure those ads and accounts abide by our policies,” Google’s director of government affairs and public policy, Lucinda Longcroft, said. “We take these issues very seriously and will investigate each issue thoroughly.”
The IPA on Monday said it has never “sought to run political advertisements” or advocate how Australians should vote at the referendum and that the “rules set by foreign big-tech companies are opaque at best”.
“As a research organisation, the IPA regularly promotes videos and material communicating our research to the public on important public policy issues,” the institute’s deputy executive director, Daniel Wild, said.
An Epoch Times spokesperson said the ads about the voice were part of an ongoing advertising campaign regarding a range of topics, such as net zero and housing affordability. “We will continue to review and comply with Google ads policy,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson also denied the organisation has direct links to Falun Gong.
An Oxfam Australia spokesperson said the organisation ran the ads through a Google Ad Grants account, which offers some charities a certain amount of free advertising each month. They said this tool does not offer the option of tagging content as an election ad.
Guardian Australia examined ads about the voice referendum using a virtual private network to change the location of an internet browser to find states being targeted by advertisers. Searches were then made on Google.com.au using keywords, such as “voice to parliament”.
Google expanded its election category to include referendum-related topics in May, but the library does not include the ads of either side prior to this date.
Google restricts election ad targeting to geography, age, gender and contextual options such as key words, but it’s unclear whether this applies to those about the voice that did not appear in the political ad library.
Unlike Meta, Google only allows political ads to be searched by the name of the advertiser rather than keywords, making it difficult to discover voice ads that are not being captured by its database.
Angus said Google and Meta need to offer better capabilities from their ad tools. “They leave a lot to be desired in terms of the ‘searchability’ of the ads and the ad content, and the completeness of the content,” he said.
The IDA was also contacted for comment.
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