Sometimes I come across the best articles. Last week it was ClickZ and a little piece about how politicians are complaining that their political advertising doesn’t work on Facebook.
Heh, heh. This made my day. I’m a fan of Facebook for many reasons, but this takes the cake.
Politicians have been complaining about the quantity of people that ‘Report This Ad’ (the little X to the right of an ad) and then click ‘offensive’ of ‘misleading’. What’s cool about this is that it lowers the ads quality score and can eventually kill it completely.
“It just crushes your quality score and the next thing you know your ad isn’t running,” said Zac Moffatt, partner at Targeted Victory, an agency that often runs Facebook ad campaigns on behalf of Republican candidates. Moffatt said he saw the ad removal data affect multiple campaigns toward the end of the 2010 election cycle.
-Excerpt courtesy of ClickZ
It warms my cynical soul that Facebook doesn’t force feed us advertising, but allows us (somewhat) to control what we are exposed to, and contrary to the ‘political advertising specialists’ I find this really nifty.
So, if you’re like me, and you think that politics should remain in the realm of debate, reason, and discussion, AND NOT marketing, PR, or advertising. If you believe that politics should be run by the people for the people, and not by lobby groups for private interests. The answer is simple.
When you see a political ad, hit the little X, and click ‘offensive’ or ‘misleading’.
After all, if there is one type of person on the planet that should understand democracy, it’s politicians, no?
