Google Bars Voters Targeted Ads

Global search engine company, Google has barred ads targeted at voters during elections.The search engine giant announced that it will no longer allow advertisers to leverage political affiliations data (like public voter records) to target election ads.

Google announced the bar in a blog post on the 20th of November, 2019. This decision aligns with its plans to reduce the pressures on social media networks over political ads.

Note that international committee lawmakers across Australia, Finland, Estonia, Georgia, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S., gathered earlier in the month to receive evidence from Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet’s Google, etc. These pieces of evidence helped them deliberate on the dangers of online disinformation, hate speech, and electoral interference.

Due to the meeting, the committee agreed to pause all online micro-targeted political ads that spread false or misleading information. Considering this, Google announced it will limit election targeting ads to age, gender, and the general location at a postal code level.

Despite the ban, Google is giving political advertisers access to contextually target ads at people. This means that ads will be targeted at people based on what they are reading online. Also, political advisers who have been verified may target ads while leveraging data from users’ behaviors. Behaviors like; search actions or uploaded data.

The ban will be enforced ahead of the general election on the 12th of December 2019. The ban will also be effected in the European Union by the end of 2019 and by January 6, 2020, across the globe.

Google said it will be prohibiting doctored or manipulated media for political and non-political ads.