Why are you seeing those particular digital advertisements that is still a tough one to answer?

I'm David Brancaccio in New York. The biggest tech platforms are getting poor grades from a new study when it comes to revealing

why we're getting fed the online ads that we see.

This is of particular interest in this election year when we get hit with loads of advertising

designed to shape our vote with

some of this driven by new forms of artificial intelligence. Here's

Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genser. The European Union's Digital Services Act requires that big internet platforms like

Meta and Google create searchable public libraries of their ads, so researchers can see who

an ad is targeting, who it's reaching, and what it's urging its audience to do.

But the study from Mozilla and Check First of Finnish research company found that none of the libraries

were fully functional with the tools needed to

monitor the impact of big tech on elections. The report said X was one of the

worst examples. The researchers couldn't conduct keyword searches in Google's ad library,

and Apples doesn't have information on things like an ad's reach and engagement.

None of the tech giants got a ready for action assessment from the report.

I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for marketplace.

China's economy had unexpected pimp in its step to start the year.

Using January to March data, we can now say the economy there grew 5.3% in a year.

But today's data show consumers in China are still being careful, Marketplace's China correspondent Jennifer Pack reports from Shanghai.

In the first quarter of this year, China's retail sales, a proxy for consumption, increased 4.7%. That's a long way from the usual 8 or 9% growth before the

pandemic hit. Most Chinese households invest in property and home prices have

taken a nose dive, making property owners feel poorer.

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