By Lou Mastria
Big Idea: The Digital Advertising Alliance has long supported practical “paid for by” disclosures for digital political ads through its Political Ads program. The DAA’s expertise in this area has proven valuable in an ongoing judicial proceeding.
Big Idea (in full): The Digital Advertising Alliance has long supported practical “paid for by” disclosures for digital political ads through its Political Ads program. The DAA’s expertise in this area has proven valuable in an ongoing judicial proceeding in which the Washington State Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality and workability of broad new requirements for political ad disclosures for digital ads.
Today’s digital advertising ecosystem is complex, and one of the most valuable roles for the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) is simplifying that complexity into practical information for consumers, voters, policymakers, and the courts.
In September 2025, the DAA filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Washington State related to an appeal brought by a digital advertising company facing a $35-million fine for alleged violations of the state’s Fair Campaign Practices Act. In its filing, the DAA tried to help the Court understand how digital advertising works and why the state’s interpretation of a campaign finance disclosure law could significantly limit the ability of ad tech platforms to do business in the state, in effect creating an unintended “chilling” effect on political speech.
The 50-year-old campaign finance law at issue requires businesses that sell political advertising to make information available to the public about the buyers of ads and the ads themselves upon request. New rules from the state’s Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) extend those requirements to digital media providers with onerous new obligations that do not take into account the differences between digital and traditional media.
Historically, the disclosure obligation was relatively simple for legacy media providers such as local newspapers and TV stations, as they sold a small number of print or broadcast ads directly to campaigns or their agencies. For digital media providers who process billions of ads across thousands of ad intermediaries and publishers, those same requirements would be complicated, expensive, and potentially unworkable, and they have forced many platforms to suspend such services in the state.
The DAA has significant experience in this area through its Political Ads program, which allows for immediate voter disclosures and additional information to help improve transparency. Thanks to its hands-on experience, the DAA felt an obligation to provide its perspective on these important issues to the Supreme Court, so it could protect the free speech of Washington political advertisers, ensure voter access to relevant political ad information, and ensure digital publishers in the state did not lose an important source of income.
Unfortunately, the rules proposed by the PDC would not protect those vital public interests. As the DAA noted in its brief:
“Yet Washington’s disclosure rules are so burdensome that many platforms and ad networks refuse to sell political ads in the state. … They are seeing not only complex and expensive technical challenges but also the huge costs of compliance. They accept political ads in nearly every state but avoid Washington. The result is not more transparency, but less speech.”
The DAA’s brief also raised concerns that the disclosure obligations would force candidates to reveal strategic and sensitive information about the kinds of voters they hope to reach, not only revealing their confidential strategy but also potentially violating their constitutional rights.
“This expanded disclosure causes real harm. First, it exposes campaign strategy to opponents. Second, it enables outside spending groups to infer campaign strategy and build off of it, despite strict rules against coordination. … The Supreme Court has ‘repeatedly found that compelled disclosure, in itself, can seriously infringe on privacy of association and belief guaranteed by the First Amendment.’ Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 64 (1976).”
The DAA’s explanations clearly resonated with both the litigants and justices hearing the case.
When the digital advertising company in question and the State of Washington filed answers to the amicus curiae briefs in early October, DAA’s brief was cited nine times by the company, and the State’s filing included five pages of responses directly addressing the DAA’s arguments.
More importantly, when the Washington Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case later that month, the issues raised by the DAA’s amicus brief clearly shaped the debate and were frequently raised by both counsel and the judges.
In his opening remarks, a legal representative of the digital advertising company went directly to the DAA argument:
“When the state imposed burdensome new requirements for disclosure on digital communications platforms in 2018, it caused a key political speech forum to be closed down in our state by the end of that year. … The biggest platforms -- Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo, Google, and X, formerly Twitter -- have banned Washington political ads in Washington in state and local races, as have ad broker platforms like Trade Desk and Campaign Ad-Cloud.”
The justices also focused on this market-narrowing issue, asking whether the fact that so many platforms independently chose to ban Washington political ads is evidence that the disclosure regime is unconstitutionally burdensome.
The DAA’s concerns about the forced disclosure of campaign strategy through targeting data also appeared to resonate, and Justice Barbara Madsen pressed the State on the issue, saying:
“I guess I'm a little concerned about if you had required a candidate to disclose who they were targeting … It's a strategy that a campaign has [that] I'm going to spend this amount of money or the only money I have to target these voters. And I now have to disclose how I am using my resources, who I spent targeting because I have a limited campaign fund, or I think, maybe, I think that these people will be unlikely to vote otherwise, and so I will target them. How deeply are we going to want to delve for purposes of the state's interest into the strategies of a campaign?”
In response, the State’s counsel was forced to acknowledge that campaigns are not foreclosed from bringing a future First Amendment challenge to the disclosure of strategic information. This can be seen as an implicit concession that this type of compelled disclosure is constitutionally problematic.
Together, the Court’s focus on platforms exiting the Washington market and on the dangers of compelled disclosure of strategic information demonstrated the influence that the DAA’s amicus brief had on its deliberations in this important case.
The DAA is pleased to have been able to provide its expertise and insights into some of the complicated practical and legal issues under consideration in Washington State, and it will continue to offer similar education for legal, regulatory, and legislative officials around the country as they address other issues that would similarly impact the advertising industry and the consumers, voters and other audiences who rely on ad-subsidized digital content.
