Spotify Technology SA is another tech giant following Twitter & Google in pausing ads on its streaming platform. In December 2019, they announced that they would be pressing a pause button on the political ads for a while ahead of the 2020 presidential elections in the US. This well thought of move will only be applied to Spotify’s ad-supported service & also its original & exclusive podcasts. This move from Spotify was reported by Ad Age.
It is imperative to note that this change applies only to the US since the music streaming site never sold political ads in any other countries.
As the controversial presidential elections near the US, it becomes more & more difficult for tech companies to handle campaign commercials & hence, in November last year, Twitter banned political ads & Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a statement that the social media platform would be halting political advertising worldwide. However, it said that it would allow few “caused-based” ads for some economic, environmental or social issues.
Along with Twitter, Google also prohibited certain types of targeted campaign ads, but they did allow advertisers to target people on the basis of general categories like age, gender & postal code.
On the other hand, Facebook continued to run political ads. However, activists & some Democratic presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders & Senators Elizabeth Warren criticized the app since the commercials are not fact-checked.
Spotify has clarified that it is only making this move to pause the ads for a while & will resume the ads in the future. This clarification was aimed at explaining that the political ads will be banned until the presidential elections take place in the US this year as the advertisements are not adequately validated & fact-checked.
Speaking on the same the company said, “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content,” they further added saying, “We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.”
