Clive Palmer's ad deluge shows Google and Facebook need to step up transparency, experts say

Marcia Church was annoyed to find Clive Palmer's election ads on Jewels Fantasy, the mobile game she often plays with her grandson.The ads were served by Google's online advertising network, but Ms Church, 62, saw similar messages when she used the company's search engine."If I Googled an upholsterer for my husband's car, it would come up," she saidShe is far from alone at being frustrated by the mining magnate's tactics and the deluge of election messages online.The ABC's Hidden Campaign project, which invited the public to send in examples of political advertising, fielded dozens of concerned submissions regarding campaign content on Facebook, YouTube and various apps.While Mr Palmer's apparent $60-million marketing blitz did not win him a seat, his strategy illustrated what experts said was a troubling lack of transparency when it came to online political advertising.Both Google and Facebook dominate the overall digital ad space in Australia. In 2018, the competition regulator estimated that Google took about $47 of a typical $100 spent on digital advertising, while $21 went to Facebook and $32 to all other websites (excluding classifieds).Yet when it comes to measuring how much parties and candidates spent on online marketing during the election, not to mention which ads they ran and where they were placed, we know very little."Without effective regulation, we are reliant on whatever crumbs the platforms choose to give us," said Scott Wright, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism.