Political ad serving in a divisive world
                     Political ad serving in a divisive world
Watson F
Writes on ad managing using ad servers for publishers, 
involved with Adspeed ad server for publishers.
It is often said that you should avoid discussing politics or religion, 
simply because both subjects are issues that tend to be very divisive. 
With that in mind, some publishers are a little iffy about running 
election ads on their websites, as the last thing anyone wants to do is 
alienate a large segment of their audience. That said, there are plenty of 
people who are willing to jump in and get involved in the political ad 
business. Anyone looking to go that route needs to know certain things 
in order to serve political ads smoothly. These are things that you, as a 
website visitor, need to know, too.
Seasonal ads
Political ads, whether you love them or hate them, don’t tend to be 
around very long. These types of ads are only really effective and 
relevant in the days and weeks leading up to an election, which means 
that they disappear as quickly as they arrive once all the votes have 
been counted. If you choose to run political ads, it’s important that you 
know this traffic pattern and adhere to the unwritten rule, which is to 
remove them from websites once the election season is over. This is 
often done automatically by setting the start and end date of the ad 
campaign when it is initially created in your ad server.
Local geo-targeting
Websites that serve a local audience would do better to run political ads 
that are relevant only to that particular region. Visitors are much more 
likely to respond to ads that are about their local issues and things that 
they are concerned about. Additionally, local elections might be more 
frequent and not quite as seasonal as general elections and other larger 
voting days so that might help with a more consistent advertising 
demand. If you want to maintain a more level playing field, a good idea 
is to attract and open to all candidates and parties as opposed to just a 
few.
Ad targeting considerations
While much of ad serving is done automatically with technology, you are 
still the one who applies ad settings and you cannot leave things to 
chance when serving political ads. Even though it is technologically 
possible to target a very specific demographic, you need to be careful 
about the specific criteria of that ad targeting. There are legal and 
ethical rules that need to be followed here, as there is a very distinct 
chance of being accused of discrimination if you omit certain protected 
groups from your targeting or on the other hand, only target a specific 
protected group without proper disclosures.
Fact checking
In an ideal world, the media and technology platforms would play an 
impartial role in the world of politics. However, the reality is that most 
people choose to take a side. With that in mind, it is important to 
understand that the political ads being shown may not be entirely 
factual and could be misleading. All sides are willing to skew the facts to 
prove a point and miss the big picture. There are publishers willing to 
promote those ideas without any fact checking so as a viewer, you own 
it to yourself to question and validate all claims.
Publisher’s choice
There are publishers out there who are not willing to run political ads or 
only those that are deemed to be “clean” and free from any sort of 
controversy as they want to be neutral and present a fair election for all 
sides. This limits ad supply and leaves more ad inventory for those 
publishers that open to more ads with less restrictions. However, it is 
always a good idea to perform due diligence on your advertisers and 
their ads, regardless of your political point of view.
About Adspeed
AdSpeed ad server is a reliable & powerful ad serving and ad 
management solution that serves your ads, tracks impressions & clicks 
and reports ad statistics in real-time. Driven by the latest ad serving 
technologies, the goal of Adspeed adserver is to provide a reliable 
platform that can help in executing online advertising strategy more 
efficiently. 
Thank you for spending your precious time in reading this article.