Google to Restrict Targeted Political Ads
According to this New York Times post, Google has made a policy change promising to restrict targeting of political ads based on public voter records or political affiliations. As the article states, this has shaken up plans for the digital campaigns of the 2020 election. Google has announced that candidates will be able to target audiences based on age, gender, and location as well as based on site contents the viewer visits. While the article makes this out to be a “shake up” for the campaign, the given restrictions do not seem to actually be that restrictive. Regardless of age, gender, and location, a politician could easily target the correct audiences based off of solely what sites they visit.
This relates directly back to the diffusion of innovation and viral marketing because it affects the way viral marketing will work. Regardless of how I think it will play out, the fact that Google has imposed these restrictions makes it obvious that there will be changes in the targeted political ad area, otherwise they wouldn’t have made these changes. If these politicians aren’t able to target their audiences as well as they wanted to or used to, then the rate at which they convince people to vote for them based solely on those ads will drop. Furthermore, political ideas can spread much like the diffusion principle and if not as many people are convinced to vote for them, then there will be less diffusion as well.