Ahead of 2024 elections, X announces it will allow paid political ads, lifting Twitter's earlier ban
It's been about eight months since Twitter, now known as X, announced it would relax its political advertising policy, and on Tuesday, X made it official.
X confirmed in a blog post this week that it is lifting its ban on paid political ads, a move it committed to earlier this year shortly after Elon Musk took over the social media network.
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X said in January that it intended to expand political advertising after first relaxing its policy for cause-based ads in the United States that "can facilitate public conversation around important topics."
In its latest announcement this week, X said it will allow paid political ads as part of its efforts to build on its commitment to free expression. Twitter first banned political ads in November 2019 under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey.
"Starting in the U.S., we'll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts," the company said in a blog post. "This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse. We'll also provide a global advertising transparency center so that everyone can review political posts being promoted on X, in addition to robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise."
Meta already has a similar transparency center, known as the Ad Library.
Advertising ahead of next year's elections, which includes the 2024 Presidential Election, is already ramping up.
The impact political ads could have on X's revenue is unclear. Ned Segal, Twitter's former Chief Financial Officer, said in an October 2019 tweet that the political ad spend for the 2018 U.S. midterms was less than $3 million. Twitter's total revenue in 2018 was $3 billion.
A New York Times report in June states X's ad sales in the United States has dropped by 59% year-over-year.