
Political advertising on Google - tareqak
https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/overview
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gremlinsinc
Why doesn't google/fb (other than money) just ban ads from non-political
campaigns.. i.e. Pacs, etc.. if you're Bernie Sanders you can run an ad, if
you're a super pac or political agency you cannot run campaigns for a
politician, only the verified politician and designated politician workers can
access adwords/fb ads for that campaign.

This would essentially help make citizens united null/void at least so far as
social media/search engine ad buys are considered...

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mmanfrin
At what point is something political vs not? Is something about climate change
political? Is an ad saying 'please pollute less' political? Where does that
line get drawn?

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gremlinsinc
I never said a pac couldn't advertise political causes... BUT they just can't
mention politicians... i.e. they can't be a 3rd arm 'unapproved' tentacle
representing a political campaign...

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tzs
Suppose the ad just talks about some issue (pollution, guns, abortion,
immigration) and what the advertiser wants to happen, and includes a link to
their site "for more information" or "how to help" or something like that. The
ad does not mention any particular politician or party.

The "for more information" or "how to help" page it links to, however, does
explicitly name politicians and praises or condemns their positions on the
issue and urges you to vote accordingly.

Allowed under your rules?

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nyxtom
Their policies are fascinating:

Take this one in not allowing certain kinds of inappropriate content:

" Content that harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of
individuals

Example: Content that singles out someone for abuse or harassment; content
that suggests a tragic event did not happen, or that victims or their families
are actors, or complicit in a cover-up of the event."

Do other networks have similar policies?

~~~
nyxtom
These two alone would cancel out most of the political ads I've seen.

" Promotions that are likely to shock or scare

Examples: Promotions that suggest you may be in danger, be infected with a
disease, or be the victim of a conspiracy"

" Promotions containing obscene or profane language

Examples: Swear or curse words, slurs relating to race or sexuality,
variations and misspellings of profane language"

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tareqak
Axios has good summary of what this is: [https://www.axios.com/google-
releases-political-ad-directory...](https://www.axios.com/google-releases-
political-ad-directory-7e9dfe79-7b3f-4837-a656-0dbf32480933.html) \- It
mentions an API to access this information. I don't want to paste the Axios
text because their entire article is pretty short, and I would feel bad about
them not getting fair compensation for this kind of short, succinct journalism
that I would like to see in the world.

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kingbirdy
I like the idea of Axios, but I've found their sourcing to be very bad, with
the linked sources sometimes being wholly irrelevant to the article.

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wolco
A few years back Axios was attempting to purchase a startup I was employed
with.

Very interesting company. They have data on 5 billion people that sits in an
airport hanger sized building.

~~~
badrequest
Is this really the same Axios? Crunchbase says they were founded in 2016, and
while it may actually be possible, I'd hate to think that a company could get
data worth housing on 5 billion people in like two years.

~~~
howard941
Politico's founders left and created Axios. They say you can't take it with
you when you go, but maybe you can?

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prolikewh0a
"Must be approved by Google"

What prevents Google from shutting out legitimate campaigns that aren't racist
or hateful, but doesn't align with how Google sees the future of the USA?

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kodablah
Many of the video ads are "no longer available" for viewing (e.g. OneNation
[0]) and I see no information about target selectors that they used. Is Google
not releasing this selectors or were the ads not targeted?

EDIT: Ok, you have to select a specific campaign to see the targets.
Unfortunately I can't see where to go from the non-specific-campaign-filter
video I select to the campaign it was on. Also there is campaign ambiguity
since they are identified by date ranges...ideally a better presentation
should be done.

A general FAQ can be found at [1]. Note how it doesn't include political ads
that don't mention a federal candidate so, e.g. ads similar to the recent
brexit ad disclosures would not even appear here if they happened
domestically. Similarly, gubernatorial ads would also not appear. I can
understand that what is and isn't a political ad when its about an issue and
not a candidate is hard to determine (especially w/out FEC ID), but we have to
assume the ads are at least viewed and categorized internally before deployed
and it is at that point it would be reasonable to mark them.

0 - [https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-
ads/library/...](https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-
ads/library/advertiser/AR544601303376986112)

1 -
[https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/9052272](https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/9052272)

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ameister14
The budgets are smaller than I thought they'd be over a 2-3 month period.
Also, not surprisingly, a lot of these ads are really, really badly done.
Misspelled words, bad contrast of text color to background, just
unprofessional.

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sdinsn
Clicking any advertiser name shows "There was an error loading content." for
me.

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caublestone
I’ve been thinking about a crowdsourced superpac. Anyone can create an ad and
then donated money funds its distribution on Google and Facebook ad networks.
Kind of like digital picketing. Does anything like this exist already?

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ISL
One need not form a PAC -- it would be sufficient to buy ads yourself, and
encourage others to do so, too.

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mscasts
I find it interesting that it's translated to Swedish but is only about the
US. Are they using Google translate behind the scenes perhaps?

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skybrian
I don't know, but it seems likely that getting translation work done by human
translators just wasn't all that hard for whoever worked on this. Big
companies have a lot of resources and Google already has to translate all
their UI text.

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sv123
This is a step in the right direction. I like the top targeted keywords, but
would be even better to see which ads and organizations bought the keywords.
Is Trump or Beto spending more on people searching for aclu?

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shiburizu
Something about seeing florida lit up on the map for such convoluted amounts
of money on Google ads got me to laugh.

