The first primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination are not happening until February 2020, but the heat is already on the biggest digital ad sellers to restrict what they allow political and issue-oriented advertisers to do.
In November 2019, Google announced it would allow political advertisers to use only three types of audience targeting when buying media: age, gender and location down to the ZIP code level. Contextual targeting is also still allowed, but other types of audience targeting, including retargeting and behavioral targeting, have been shut down for these types of advertisers—first in the UK, ahead of their parliamentary elections, and soon to follow elsewhere worldwide.
That announcement came after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread that the microblogging service would be disallowing all types of political and issue-related advertising—a position the company later backtracked on, saying it would allow cause-oriented ads from registered buyers.
Twitter’s move was widely hailed as a PR victory because of the widespread popularity among consumers of banning political ads. In an October 2019 poll from researcher CivicScience, 69% of US adult internet users agreed with Twitter's decision at least somewhat—including a majority (56%) who agreed strongly. Responses were similar when respondents were asked whether Facebook should ban political ads.