LTO Links #300

Spotify Brings Back Political Ads

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Issue #300 |  

Advertising

Spotify stopped political ads in 2020. It just quietly brought them back.

"Spotify will only host ads from known political entities, and it won’t accept ads from the much broader bucket of issue-related groups. The ads will also only run on Spotify’s podcast network for now, not its free music-streaming network. Podcasts will also have the option of turning off political ads if they want to."

Meta to give researchers more information on political ad targeting.

"Starting on Monday, academics and researchers who are registered with an initiative called the Facebook Open Research and Transparency project will be allowed to see data on how each political or social ad was used to target people. The information includes which interest categories — such as “people who like dogs” or “people who enjoy the outdoors” — were chosen to aim an ad at someone.

"In addition, Meta said it planned to include summaries of targeting information for some of its ads in its publicly viewable Ad Library starting in July."

Campaigns

How the Youngkin Campaign Put its Web Presence Front and Center

"Rodgers and his team also designed the site, using Webflow, with the idea that it could be user-friendly enough for campaign staff without a coding background: 'The campaign was able to go and make a pretty good amount of changes themselves.'"

Fundraising

GOP state legislative campaign hub launches plan to turbocharge online fundraising

"The arrangement will also offset the front-end costs of prospecting for individual donors — an expensive first step for digital programs that requires campaigns or committees to spend heavily on Facebook, Google and other online platforms to collect donors’ email addresses or other contact information."

International

A Dictator’s Son Rewrites History on TikTok in His Bid to Become the Philippines’ Next President

"Around 56% of the 65.7 million registered voters are under 40—meaning that they either weren’t born during the rule of Marcos Sr., or were too young to remember it. Teehankee says that social media, with its mandate to keep content short and succinct, flattens history—making it easier for myths and disinformation to take hold in the minds of young voters."

Social Media

How politicians adapt to new media logic. A longitudinal perspective on accommodation to user-engagement on Facebook

"Among the results, politicians had increasingly used message features that had previously raised the number of interactions, including new technical opportunities and social affordances on Facebook, whereas their use of established communication strategies had remained relatively stable."

Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grass-roots groups to fight its battles in Washington

"While many companies fund outside political groups to push industry-friendly messages, Facebook’s reliance on proxies has grown more extensive recently because of its unique reputational crisis, said three people familiar with internal conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them."