Transparency of Billboard Advertising locations in Local Municipalities in North Macedonia

This activity is part of the project “Political Billboards 2025”, the primary objective of which is to provide accurate, verifiable, and structured data on the number and locations of billboard positions, including their GPS coordinates, across all municipalities in the country. These data serve as a key resource for monitoring visual political advertising in the electoral process.

It is important to emphasize that this research is based exclusively on the analysis of data obtained from units of local self-government and publicly available institutional sources. The activity does not include field mapping or independent identification of new billboard locations, but focuses strictly on the availability, completeness, and quality of data held by municipalities and related public authorities.

In North Macedonia, there is no centralized, publicly available, and regularly updated database covering all billboard locations (both used from Local municipalise or given on lease to private companies). Although municipalities and the City of Skopje hold these data within their respective competencies, they do not systematically publish them on their official websites. In addition, legal entities granted the right to manage billboard locations maintain their own lists; however, many of these datasets are not publicly accessible, and when they are, they are often incomplete or published in non-standardized formats.

To access these data, the research relied on the mechanism for free access to public information, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Public Information.

In the context of the 2025 local elections, the State Election Commission conducted a public draw on 24 September 2025 to allocate advertising panels and billboards for political advertising. Under the legal framework, the maximum number of advertising panels and billboards that may be used for political advertising is limited to 50% of the total number within a given municipality, or within the territory managed by a specific legal entity.

Following the publication of the Minutes of the allocation draw, an attempt was made to obtain offers and price lists from all legal entities listed in the document. There were no entities that did publicly disclose lists of billboard locations, and GPS coordinates or precise geographic identifiers are largely missing.

The absence of a centralized and publicly accessible database of billboard locations poses significant challenges for civil society organizations, researchers, and election observers. The fragmentation of data across municipalities, the use of different data formats, and the frequent lack of geographic coordinates significantly hinder effective, systematic, and comparable monitoring of election campaigns.

Access to accurate, complete, and structured data on billboard locations enables:

• verification of compliance with the legal framework,
• effective monitoring of the allocation and use of advertising space,
• assessment of equal access for all political actors, and
• enhanced accountability of local self-government units and legal entities managing public space.
• Improved transparency and mechanisms for election monitoring

This research aims to identify existing transparency gaps in data held by local self-government units and to provide evidence-based recommendations for improving the availability and accessibility of public information related to political advertising. The report presents the research methodology, findings from the public information request process, and the key conclusions and recommendations resulting from this activity.