By Jennifer Yusuf
Google revealed it’s small target audience on election ads, a major shift for one of the internet’s biggest ad sites which comes after Twitter decided to drop political ads entirely and Facebook said it’s considering policy changes like targeting restrictions.
Under a new policy announced on Wednesday, on Google’s ad platforms, election messaging can target audiences based on just three general categories: age, gender and location, down to a level of postal code.
With more personal information, such as political affiliation and voting records, political organizations and candidates will no longer be able to target their ads to prospective voters.
For example, YouTube videos or news articles that people watch or read, political advertisers will still be able to place contextual ads based on the subject matter.
The company also announced that its ad policy would be clarified by adding examples of what is banned in ads.
Material that will now be explicitly banned includes deep-fakes— sophisticated visual forgeries generated using artificial intelligence — and “ads or destinations that demonstrably make false claims that could significantly undermine participation or confidence in an electoral or democratic process,” Scott Spencer, vice president of product management at Google Ads, wrote in a blog post.
