Last week, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced that his platform would no longer be allowing sponsored political ads. This has sparked a lot of conversation in the social media and marketing community; many people are wondering how this is going to turn out. So, what’s going on with Twitter’s political ad ban, and how can it affect out in the future?
First of all, what happened?
On October 30, 2019, Jack Dorsey tweeted that Twitter “made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally.” He went on in his Twitter thread to explain the reasoning behind it. The primary reason is that political candidates can pay for advertisements to show up on people’s feeds. As a result, each political candidate is “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” Essentially, it’s his belief that sponsored political posts “remove [the] decision” for people to follow their favorite candidates’ accounts to see their content.
What does this mean for politics on Twitter going forward?
Well, we won’t know the entire policy until it’s announced on November 15. However, we know that there will be policies regulating what political tweets will and won’t be allowed. In the past, there were rules to keep politicians from spreading false messages. Some have speculated that this most recent ban could be in response to the lack of enforcement of these previous regulations.
At the end of his Twitter thread, after people began replying, Jack Dorsey offered one final comment. “This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.” In the time between his announcement and November 15, there’s bound to be a lot of discourse about what will and won’t be allowed.
Why does this matter?
In the grand scheme of things, this situation has a lot to say about advertising on Twitter. Here at Blackwood, we fully believe that social media marketing is a pay-to-play game. You can pay for your business’ ads to appear to certain demographics.
Thus, depending on the way you view the political ad situation, it can be a testament to the effectiveness of advertising on social media. If the founder of Twitter is acknowledging the broad scope of people who see these ads, they’ve got to be working! However, it also can be a testament to making sure you have the correct target market for your advertisements. By showing your business to the right people, you’re ensuring that you’ll gain the highest possible number of potential clients.
How does the Twitter political ad ban relate to your business?
Whatever platform you choose to advertise on, think of this as a large-scale success story for social media advertising. Regardless of your political views, the messages of all candidates have been pushed out to large numbers of people using the advertising program on Twitter. It worked well enough to bring a change, so it’ll definitely work to spread the word about your business!
Not sure how to begin advertising on social media? Don’t stress – reach out to us here at Blackwood Creative. We’re the experts in social media marketing and advertising, and we’d love to work with you to create something beautiful.
