The challenge in this area of federal regulations, however, is the absence of
any clear reporting standard in the itemization. There is no mandate that
political committees uniformly report expenditures for online advertising. For
example, if a candidate pays a consulting ﬁrm to design and place ads online (or
to place ads on TV or radio or to design a print ﬂyer), the itemized expenditure
might simply list the ﬁrm as recipient and the purpose of the expenditure as
“advertising.” This makes it incredibly hard for citizens, journalists, and
academics to catalog the expenditures of registered political committees for
online political advertising. It is also impossible to see the list of purchased
creatives (i.e., ads) attached to the expenditures; and so, while the dollars
allocated to online political advertising are embedded in reports to the FEC,
they are of limited help in tracking these efforts across campaigns and election
cycles.
Social_Media_and_Democracy