ter has lifted its ban on political and cause-based ads
Twitter announced that it would relax its ban against cause-based advertising (such as ads for women’s rights or climate change) via Twitter. They plan to lift their own restrictions on political advertising.
Twitter bans political ads. In 2019, Twitter has banned political ads. They also banned political fundraising last year and began requiring accounts belonging to politicians and government departments to be verified.
Cause-based bans. They currently ban cause-based advertising. Their help documentation states
- Advertising should not be used as a way to influence political, judicial or legislative outcomes. However, cause-based marketing can help facilitate public discussion around important topics.
- Advertising using microtargeting poses entirely new challenges to civic discourse, which are still not fully understood.
Hence, why is it important to make the changes? Unclear. The exact nature of the changes to policies, other than what is mentioned in the tweet, is also unclear. However, Elon Musk, the CEO, has earned a reputation for breaking things up and then immediately taking them out. He also has a penchant for getting the largest advertisers to leave the platform.
Why we care. I don’t know if the bans will make it harder for advertisers to find new clients, draw more money from less-than-credible sources, or scare them away. If you work for a cause-based organisation, this could be good news – if your ability to navigate the platform and get verified can make you stand out amongst would-be fraudsters and political opposition and/or corrupt accounts.
Search Engine Land first published the post Twitter lifts its ban on cause-based, political ads.