Google to limit political ad targeting

Google on Wednesday announced it will no longer allow advertisers to micro-target their political messaging, though the tech giant will still allow some misinformation in political ads amid rising scrutiny how online platforms mediate political discourse.

The context: In a new blog post, Google said it is tweaking its political ad policies in response to “recent concerns and debates about political advertising.” Over the past month, Facebook drew fury over its policy allowing politicians to make false or misleading statements in ads, and Twitter angered a broad swath of advocacy and conservative groups by declaring it will no longer run political ads at all.

“We want to improve voters’ confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms,” Scott Spencer, Google’s vice president of product management at Google Ads, said Wednesday.

Limiting micro-targeting: Google said it will limit the factors that political advertisers can target with to age, gender, and location to the zip code level. The new changes will go into effect globally at the beginning of 2020.

The company had come under heat from critics and competitors, like Mozilla, for allowing micro-targeting of political ads. Google’s ad platform, which minted $116.3 billion last year alone, is a top destination for advertisers due to its ability to reach audiences with unprecedented specificity.

But micro-targeting, which uses consumer data and demographics to narrowly segment audiences, has been criticized for letting campaigns spread misinformation to susceptible populations in political ads that are not seen by the general public, avoiding accountability.

The shift from Google follows reports earlier this month that Facebook is considering a similar change.

Taking action on misinformation: While most inaccurate political messaging will remain unaffected, Google clarified its policies to say it will remove advertisements that include doctored content, mislead viewers about the census process or could “significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.”

“We expect that the number of political ads on which we take action will be very limited–but we will continue to do so for clear violations,” Spencer wrote.