Report claims Apple, X, LinkedIn, TikTok have big gaps in their ad repositories

A new report dubbed “Full Disclosure: Stress-testing tech platforms’ ad repositories” by Mozilla and Checkfirst investigated the Apple App Store, AliExpress, Bing, Booking.com, Alphabet’s Google Search & YouTube, LinkedIn, Meta, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and Zalando. 

It purported found that the repositories of these products/services “are plagued by missing data, bugs, shoddy features, and unacceptable shortfalls.”

From the report: The repositories often leave a lot of uncertainty about who is behind an ad — and the system can easily be gamed. Meta discloses the beneficiary and the payer, while most platforms disclose the “Advertiser” or “Sponsor” without further context. TikTok, Bing, and Google, for instance, include the registered location of the party paying for the ad. The repositories would leave roughly half the world’s population estimated to be voting in elections in 2024 uncertain about who is behind the advertising content they consume.

“X’s transparency tools are an utter disappointment,” said Claire Pershan, EU Advocacy Lead at Mozilla. “Its repository offers no filtering and sorting capabilities; ads can only be accessed through a cumbersome CSV export file; the content of ads is not disclosed (only a URL to the ads), and there are gaps in targeting parameters and recipient data. And searching for historical content is nearly impossible. All this may be why the European Commission has included X’s ad repository in its formal proceedings against the platform under the DSA.”

He added that Apple, LinkedIn, and TikTok fared moderately better, but only by comparison — they also have big gaps in data and functionality. Most tools were hindered by search rate limits, poor sorting and filtering features, limited accessibility, and more.

“Ad transparency tools are essential for platform accountability — a first line of defense, like smoke detectors,” Persian said. “But our research shows most of the world’s largest platforms are not offering up functionally useful ad repositories. The current batch of tools exist, yes — but in some cases, that’s about all that can be said about them.”