It’s that time of the year again-- primary election time, my friends. One major difference between this year’s elections and the ones four years ago is the increasing virtual venues for sharing political opinion and by extension, the increase in influence of political content on the web.
Of course, every enthusiast might want to host online ads promoting his or her political affiliations or beliefs. But beware… if you’re posting with Google’s popular ad service, AdWords, you better make sure you’re abiding by the company’s policies.
On Friday, the Google Public Policy blog posted some comments on the web as a tool for political drive as well as updated information on official regulations for political-related ads.
Google acknowledges that “candidates have used the web in new and creative ways - including social networks, maps mashups, geo-targeting online ads” and that “these new technologies have helped voters get more personally engaged in the political process.”
Likewise, the post mentioned that past years have illustrated an upswing in Google keyword ads used to “help reach voters who care about particular issues.”
“We recognize that the nature of political advertising is to inspire debate,” Google wrote, “and we are committed to fairness and freedom of expression.”
Diving into the policies, Google outlined requirements for editorial content, instilled a respectable degrees of fairness, forbade attacks on individual’s personal life, addressed sponsored ad stipulations, and insisted that ad links reflect content and do not mislead the browser.
For more details on the regulations, check back at the Google Public Policy blog. Happy voting!
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