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Google may have lifted its political ad ban on Thursday, ending a month-long blackout for election campaign advertisers. But Facebook’s equivalent policy remains unchanged, to ad buyers’ increasing chagrin.
Facebook’s ongoing blackout is leading to a loss of millions in potential fundraising, as well as unwittingly penalizing ads outside of politics, including mission-focused campaigns like environmental advocate groups.
There’s been no shortage of bogus political misinformation on the internet around Election Day, but you won’t find any in recent Facebook or Google ads. That’s because the companies instituted a temporary stoppage on political ads after the polls closed on Nov. 3. The ban prevented those working on the two upcoming Senate runoff elections in Georgia from advertising on the companies’ ad networks.
“While we no longer consider the post-election period to be a sensitive event, we will still rigorously enforce our ads policies, which strictly prohibit demonstrably false information that could significantly undermine trust in elections or the democratic process, among other forms of abuse,” Mark Beatty, Google’s head of industry, told advertisers in an email obtained by Adweek.
A campaign spokesperson for candidate Raphael Warnock, who is challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler, said the campaign is pleased that “Google has finally lifted its hurtful ban” and was disappointed it was lifted after the voter registration deadline passed on Dec. 7. “It is critical Facebook reverses course and does the same,” the spokesperson said.
Liberal ad buyers and the two Democratic Senate campaigns in Georgia expressed their contempt for Facebook’s ad stoppages; one individual even even went so far as to call it voter suppression. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
One Democratic ad buyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they estimate that “at least eight figures of fundraising has been lost around Georgia, probably even higher.” This is even more pressing considering the latest GroupM report shows that, for the first time, more than half of digital advertising dollars (excluding political ad spend) are going to platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
The campaign for candidate Jon Ossoff, who is challenging Sen. David Perdue, had harsher words for Facebook.
“Facebook continues to engage in their own form of voter suppression by maintaining their ban that disproportionately impacts communities of colors while ignoring the rampant disinformation on their platform,” campaign spokesperson Miryam Lipper told Adweek, suggesting that the ad bans have hurt the campaign’s ability to register voters. “Facebook should immediately follow suit and lift their ad ban so we can communicate vital early vote information to Georgians.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s executive director, Scott Fairchild, called Facebook and Google’s policies “misguided.” He added that they don’t “solve the serious problems these online platforms have with spreading organic disinformation about our elections.”
“The longer Facebook’s ad ban continues, the more indefensible this decision becomes and the more harm it does to voter participation in Georgia’s runoffs, with a disproportionate effect on communities of color,” Fairchild added.
The Loeffler and Perdue campaigns did not respond to requests for comment and neither did the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Facebook declined to comment on the status of the ban, though it told advertisers on Nov. 11 that it would be extended “another month.”
But Facebook’s ad stoppage has grown bigger than political ads. The New York Times recently reported that mission-focused businesses, like ones that advocate on “hunger, the environment and immigration,” were unable to use Facebook ads because they were lumped into the ad stoppage. Facebook product manager Sarah Schiff told the Times the company had to make “difficult decisions.”
Tim Lim, a Democratic political consultant who said he is working for nonprofits and ongoing campaigns but declined to name them, said his clients were hurt by the recent stoppages. “Google’s lifting of the ban will open up search ads back for non-profits and [YouTube] for [Georgia] senate campaigns, both essential items for the next month.”
“Hopefully this puts immense pressure [on Facebook] to open up since Google thinks it’s safe enough,” Lim said.
On the plus side, ad buyers are forced to look outside the platforms to other channels. Reid Vineis, a Republican-aligned political buyer for the firm Majority Strategies, said this could signal a longer-term shift in dependence on those “walled gardens.”
“The winners here are the other platforms that allow political advertising and have quality inventory and targeting. This would include select news publishers, OTT/CTV networks and the programmatic space,” Vineis said. “Going forward in the 2022 cycle we will see spending more evenly distributed as opposed to years past when the big two platforms saw the lion share of political dollars.”
