I can understand marketers staying away from unseemly content like porn sites, sites linked to violence, etc. because of the potential negative halo. But my hunch is that the aversion to political content (not specifically ads) is probably only seen in the digital age. I doubt brands had any qualms about seeing their ads in newspapers. I guess that is due to the fact that newspapers and TV had been traditionally been trustworthy sources. It's only when the digital age has lowered the bar to sharing content, and people are exposed to inauthentic or seemingly biased news stories, that people have started to mistrust political content.
In my time at adtech, I saw this concern from app publishers too. Political content had a higher tendency to aggrieve a user, prompting a backlash in the app store reviews, hurting app downloads immediately. If I am right, because websites would be largely protected from any backlash hurting their discovery massively, websites may also tend to have a more liberal policy towards political ads.
Would be really interesting to hear other experiences from adtech.
It's an interesting question.
I can understand marketers staying away from unseemly content like porn sites, sites linked to violence, etc. because of the potential negative halo. But my hunch is that the aversion to political content (not specifically ads) is probably only seen in the digital age. I doubt brands had any qualms about seeing their ads in newspapers. I guess that is due to the fact that newspapers and TV had been traditionally been trustworthy sources. It's only when the digital age has lowered the bar to sharing content, and people are exposed to inauthentic or seemingly biased news stories, that people have started to mistrust political content.
In my time at adtech, I saw this concern from app publishers too. Political content had a higher tendency to aggrieve a user, prompting a backlash in the app store reviews, hurting app downloads immediately. If I am right, because websites would be largely protected from any backlash hurting their discovery massively, websites may also tend to have a more liberal policy towards political ads.
Would be really interesting to hear other experiences from adtech.