Twitter announces it will relax its political advertising policy
Twitter on Tuesday announced it will relax its political ads policy "in the coming weeks."
The @TwitterSafety account announced the policy change in two tweets Tuesday night: "We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks."
The second tweet: "Moving forward, we will align our advertising policy with that of TV and other outlets. As with all policy changes, we will first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people on Twitter. We'll share more details as this work progresses."
Twitter first banned political ads in November 2019 under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey. The policy change announcement comes as advertisers continue to flee the platform in droves after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022. The impact political ads could have on Twitter's revenue is unclear. Ned Segal, Twitter's former Chief Financial Officer, said in an October 2019 tweet that political ad spend for the 2018 U.S. midterms was less than $3 million. Twitter's total revenue in 2018 was $3 billion.
The policy change would put Twitter in alignment on political advertising with other social media companies, including Meta's Facebook/Instagram and Google's YouTube. TikTok, however, has a ban on political ads.