The practice of making advertising activities visible and accountable, including disclosure of ad sponsors, targeting criteria, and spending.
Ad transparency refers to making advertising practices open and accessible to the public. Major platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok maintain ad libraries that show currently active ads. Regulatory requirements mandate that platforms disclose information about who pays for ads, how they are targeted, and how much is spent. For marketers, ad transparency creates opportunities for competitive research — tools like AdLibrary can aggregate and analyze this publicly available data to provide actionable intelligence.
