Filing a notice on behalf of a client

Many transparency notices are not filed by the party, candidate or organisation behind the advertisement. An agency, a consultant or a colleague does it for them. PolAds has a mode for exactly that. This post explains who the Regulation treats as the sponsor, what it asks of the agency in between, and how filing on behalf of someone else works step by step.

Your client is the sponsor

PolAds calls the person behind an advertisement the advertiser, whom the Regulation calls the sponsor.

Reg. 2024/900 Art. 3(10)
‘sponsor’ means the natural or legal person at whose request or on whose behalf a political advertisement is prepared, placed, promoted, published, delivered or disseminated

The Commission's guidelines say this covers political advertising services requested on behalf of sponsors, for instance by marketing agencies acting on behalf of the people who requested their services (Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 1.1). When you place an advertisement for a client, the client is the sponsor and you act on the client's behalf.

If you are an agency or consultant, you are probably a provider of political advertising services

Article 3(5) defines a political advertising service as a service consisting of political advertising, and Article 3(6) makes anyone engaging in such a service a provider of political advertising services, except for purely ancillary services. The Guidelines name copywriters, design agencies, advertising agencies and political consultancies as examples on the preparation side (section 1.2). Whether a particular service is purely ancillary is assessed case by case, looking at how much influence the provider has over the content and its placement (section 1.2.1.2). A colleague filing for their own organisation provides no service, so these provider duties do not apply to them (section 2.2.2).

What the Regulation asks of agencies

Several duties in Article 7 name sponsors and providers acting on their behalf side by side.

• Declarations. Providers of advertising services must ask sponsors, and providers acting on their behalf, to declare whether the service is a political advertising service and whether they meet the requirements of Article 5(2). Those declarations must be truthful, and whoever makes them is responsible for their accuracy (Article 7(1)).
• Contracts. Contracts for political advertising services must require the sponsor, or the provider acting on its behalf, to give that declaration and the information needed for Articles 9(1), 11(1) and 12(1), completely, accurately and without undue delay (Article 7(2)).
• Updates. When information already passed on changes, the update must follow.

Reg. 2024/900 Art. 7(3)
Where a sponsor, or a provider of advertising services acting on behalf of a sponsor, becomes aware that information which it has transmitted has changed, it shall ensure that updated information is transmitted to the relevant provider of political advertising services in a timely, complete and accurate manner.

• Corrections. If a provider asks you to correct a manifestly erroneous declaration or piece of information, the correction must be complete, accurate and made without undue delay (Article 7(4)).

As a provider in your own right, you also keep your own records: the advertisement or campaign your service is connected to, the service you provided, the amounts you invoiced and the value of other benefits you received in exchange, whether those amounts and benefits are of public or private origin and from inside or outside the Union, the identity and contact details of the sponsor and of any entity ultimately controlling it, with the place of establishment of a legal person, and any election, referendum, legislative or regulatory process the advertisement is linked to. You keep them in machine-readable form for seven years (Article 9(1) and 9(3)). Micro-undertakings for which advertising services are purely marginal and ancillary are exempt (Article 9(4)). Providers must also pass that information on to the publisher in a timely, complete and accurate manner (Article 10(1)).

The contract is where responsibility is shared out. Article 6(2) requires contractual arrangements that enable compliance, including the allocation of responsibility. The Guidelines note that an agency hired only to prepare an advertisement, which the sponsor then places as it sees fit, should not a priori be liable for informing a publisher it does not know about (section 3.2.3).

How on-behalf filing works on PolAds

From the contract to a later change, this is who does what.

You need a PolAds account. The first time you file, the Advertiser step asks for your own details as representative, then your client's. Then:

1. Choose the mode. The Advertiser step opens with Who is the advertiser?. Choose I am registering on behalf of another entity.
2. Enter your client's details. Fill in the Advertiser details section with your client's identity and email address. If you have filed for this client before, Select an existing advertiser reuses their details, and Edit these details changes them for this notice only.
3. Confirm your authorisation. Before you continue, a dialogue asks you to confirm that the information is accurate and that you are authorised, and hold the necessary documentation, to register the notice on your client's behalf. The confirmation is made for each notice and recorded with it, so a duplicated notice asks again.
4. Answer the funding questions for your client. The form asks Is the advertiser the paying entity? and whether another entity ultimately controls your client. A payer who is different from the sponsor or the controlling entity must be identified on the notice (Article 12(1)(b)). The funding step explained goes through this part.
5. Declare and submit. On the Review step you tick the declaration on behalf of your client, then settle the fee and submit.

What appears on the public notice

Your client is named on the notice as the sponsor, with the name, email address and, for an organisation, the address that Article 12(1)(a) requires. Your own details as representative are kept with the record but do not appear on the public notice, the PDF or the machine-readable versions.

PolAds does not ask your client to approve the notice before it goes to the publisher. It does keep them informed: your client receives a copy of the submission confirmation and of the outcome of any amendment or deletion request. That matters because your client, as sponsor, provides and ensures the accuracy of the information Article 7(3) lists. On the notice that is its identity and any controlling entity, any separate payer, the publication period, the origin of the money, the links to official information on how to take part in a linked election or referendum, and any earlier suspension or discontinuation (Article 12(1), points (a), (b), (c), (e), (h) and (k)). The publisher ensures the accuracy of the amounts, the methodology, the repository link, the complaint mechanism and the reach (Article 12(2)). The declarations you make as a provider acting on your client's behalf are yours: you make them truthfully and are responsible for their accuracy (Article 7(1)).

When something changes

If the information changes after the publisher has signed off, file an amendment from your account. Amending a live notice explains how it works and what it costs.

A point the text leaves open

Sometimes an agency pays the publisher and then invoices its client. Article 12(1)(b) asks the notice to identify the person ‘that provides remuneration in exchange for the political advertisement’ when that person is different from the sponsor or the entity controlling it. Recital 40 says the sponsor is ‘normally the person or entity providing remuneration in exchange for political advertising services’. Neither says whether an agency that pays first and recharges its client later is that person. The point is open, and PolAds has not taken a position on it. Agree with your client and the publisher how the payer is declared, and keep the documents that support it.

Sources

• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 3(5), 3(6) and 3(10)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 6(2)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 7(1) to 7(4)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 9(1), 9(3) and 9(4)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 10(1)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 12(1) and 12(2)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Recital 40
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 1.1
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 1.2
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 1.2.1.2
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.2.2
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 3.2.3