On Friday, Spotify Technology said that it will pause marketing political advertisements on its music streaming platform in early 2020. In October, this world’s popular paid music streaming service, with approximately 141 million users utilizing its ad-supported platform, said the pause will expand to Spotify exclusive podcasts as well as Spotify original.
The move was first notified by AdAge, which comes as operations for the presidential election in the US in November 2020 heat up.
Online platforms such as Alphabet’s Google and Facebook are under increasing pressure for providing misinformation on their platforms, and to stop displaying political ads, which contain misleading or false claims.
Twitter has already banned political ads in the month of October, and Google said that it will stop selling advertisers the powers to target election ads using information that includes general political affiliations and public voter records in the last month.
A spokeswoman from Spotify said in a comment to Reuters, “At this point of time, we do not still have the required level of robustness in our systems, processes, and tools to validate responsibly and review the content. We will assess again regarding this decision as we proceed to develop our capabilities.“
Spotify that was accepting only the political ads in the United States did not answer to the Reuters question on how much income the company is generating from the political ads.
A Republican digital strategist, Eric Wilson, said, “Spotify was not a popularly used online advertising platform for campaigning earlier. But as some of the online platforms limited their political ad inventory, advertisers are on the chase for new options.”
The new policy would cover political groups, including candidates for office, political parties, elected and appointed officials, political action committees (PACs), and super PACs, and the content, which advocates for or against these entities as well. Spotify will also not display advertisements that advocate for judicial and legislative outcomes.
The move is going to apply only to ad sales of Spotify, but not the advertisements inserted in third-party content, although those will, however, be subjected to Spotify’s broader content policies.
Leave a Reply