Google bars elections ads from using political leanings, voter data

  21 November 2019    Read: 1393
Google bars elections ads from using political leanings, voter data

Alphabet Inc’s Google will stop giving advertisers the ability to target election ads using data such as public voter records and general political affiliations, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday, AzVision.az reports quoting Reuters.

The move coincides with pressure on social media platforms over their handling of political advertising ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2020. 

Google said it would limit audience targeting for election ads to age, gender and general location at a postal code level. Political advertisers also can still contextually target, such as serving ads to people reading about a certain topic.

Previously, verified political advertisers could also target ads using data gleaned from users’ behavior, such as search actions, that categorized them as left-leaning, right-leaning or independent. They could also upload data such as voter file lists to target ads to a lookalike audience which exhibited similar behaviors to those in the data.


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