Targeted advertising on online social platforms has become increasingly relevant in the political marketing toolkit. Monitoring political advertising is crucial to ensure accountability and transparency of democratic processes. Leveraging Meta public library of sponsored content, we study the extent to which political ads were delivered on Facebook and Instagram in the run up to 2022 Italian general election. Analyzing over 23 k unique ads paid by 2.7 k unique sponsors, with an associated amount spent of 4 M EUR and over 1 billion views generated, we investigate temporal, geographical, and demographic patterns of the political campaigning activity of main coalitions. We find results that are in accordance with their political agenda and the electoral outcome, highlighting how the most active coalitions also obtained most of the votes and showing regional differences that are coherent with the (targeted) political base of each group. Our work raises attention to the need for further studies of digital advertising and its implications for individuals' opinions and choices.

翻译：在线社交平台上的定向广告已成为政治营销工具包中日益重要的组成部分。监测政治广告对于确保民主进程的问责制和透明度至关重要。本研究利用Meta平台的赞助内容公共数据库，考察了2022年意大利大选前夕Facebook和Instagram上政治广告的投放情况。通过分析由2700个独立赞助商支付的超过2.3万个独立广告（相关支出达400万欧元，产生逾10亿次浏览量），我们探究了主要联盟政治竞选活动的时间、地理和人口统计模式。研究结果与其政治议程和选举结果一致，揭示了最活跃的联盟同时也获得了最多选票，并呈现出与各团体（定向）政治基础相一致的地区差异。本研究呼吁进一步开展数字广告及其对个人观点与选择影响的相关研究。