Investigating Political Ads Workflow

This workflow turns public ad-transparency libraries into a structured, analyzable dataset.

Overview

• Purpose: research political advertising transparently.
• Objective: a structured dataset and spend timeline.
• Difficulty: Intermediate.

Step 1 — Define scope

Choose an advertiser, keyword, region, and date range. A tight scope keeps the dataset manageable.

Step 2 — Search the libraries

Query the Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center.

Step 3 — Extract fields

For each ad, capture: advertiser, funding entity, spend range, impressions, dates, targeting, and creative. Bulk exports are available via the Meta and Google datasets.

Step 4 — Structure the data

Load into a spreadsheet. Normalize advertiser names and currencies.

Step 5 — Analyze

Build a spend timeline. Look for spikes, duplicated creatives across pages, and funder mismatches.

Step 6 — Preserve and cite

Archive ad pages and cite the transparency source for every figure.

Outputs

• A structured ad dataset
• A spend-over-time timeline
• An evidence log with citations

Common mistakes

• Comparing spend across platforms with different definitions
• Ignoring the platform's "political" classification caveats
• Failing to archive ads that are later removed