Advertising

Left-leaning groups are pouring money into online advertising on platforms like Facebook ahead of the midterms — and cash from Silicon Valley staffers is flowing to Democratic campaigns, according to recently released data. Donations to Democratic candidates from tech staffers, political action committees and outside groups is more than triple that of Republican candidates, $13.4 million to $3.7 million.

Facebook’s ads have been a source of frustration for lawmakers for years, especially in the aftermath of the 2016 elections when it was discovered that Russian influence agents were able to place political ads involving US politics on the platform. Bills have been introduced to hold these platforms accountable, such as the Honest Ads Act, and federal agencies have launched investigations, but everything so far has fallen flat.

In apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission.

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly suggested the agency's children's video rules might be unconstitutional. He said a good case could, and had been, made that the rules are an abridgement of broadcasters' speech rights, and thus illegal. 

The Parents Television Council says the Federal Communications Commission needs to answer some fundamental questions before it decides to make any "material" changes to its children's TV rules, which would mean voting on an order stemming from the July Notice of Proposed Rulemakiing it approved launching the review of the rules. The questions PTC says have yet to be answered in the Notice of Propose Rulemaking:

Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections, federal prosecutors said in unsealing a criminal complaint against one of them. The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, of St. Petersburg, was involved in an effort “to spread distrust toward candidates for US political office and the US political system,” prosecutors said.

The $220 billion US advertising industry is facing an unprecedented wave of scandal and controversy, causing frustration amongst marketers, consumers, and lawmakers. The advertising industry is loosely regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which has the jurisdiction to punish people or business for unfair trade practices, including deceptive advertising. The Federal Communications Commission also has the right to set rules around non-digital ads, like TV and radio.

Dozens of advertisements removed from Facebook for being political ahead of the November midterm elections did not appear to express any political view. The ads from businesses, universities, nonprofits and other organizations did seem to have something in common: They mentioned "African-American," "Latino," "Hispanic," "Mexican," "women," "LGBT" or were written in Spanish. Even offers of free delivery from Chipotle Mexican Grill were mislabeled as political.

A competitive race in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District has an alarming new element: anonymous attack ads on Facebook. The ads, which appeared on a Facebook page called “Wacky Wexton Not,” were purchased by a critic of Jennifer Wexton, a Democratic candidate trying to unseat Rep Barbara Comstock (R-VA). The person or group behind the ads is known to Facebook, but a mystery to the public.

Facebook knew of problems in how it measured viewership of video ads on its platform for more than a year before it disclosed them in 2016, according to a complaint filed by advertisers. A group of small advertisers filed a lawsuit in California federal court in 2016, alleging the tech giant engaged in unfair business conduct by disseminating inaccurate metrics that significantly overestimated the amount of time users were spending watching video ads.