Google Bans Political Ads from Using Voter Data for Targeting Breitbart

This decision comes as social media firms are placed under pressure from members of Congress over their handling of political advertising ahead of the U.S.

Political advertisers will be allowed to contextually target such as serving ads to people that are searching form information on a certain topic.

Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy.This will align our approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion.

Tim Cameron, chief executive of FlexPoint Media, stated that his firm will no longer be licensing Googles ad-buying tool in January as a result of the new restrictions. Cameron stated that the voter file features allowed FlexPoint to target people who did not regularly vote and encourage them to turn out.Cameron believes that the loss of such targeting could result ina slow decline of civic participation and hurt the ability of insurgent, underfunded candidates to gain support.

Twitter has banned political ads on its platform while Facebook is reviewing its policies following harsh criticism from lawmakers over its decision to not fact-check ads from politicians.

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