Google announced last night that it will soon enforce new limitations on what you can use Google Ads for with political ads. Specifically Google said the targeting options have been limited to "age, gender, and general location." Google also updated its definition of political ads if you are interested in reading that.

Google is also explicitly prohibiting Google Ads with "things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process." Google wrote here "Effective immediately, the Google Ads policy on Misrepresentation will be updated to add examples of misleading content regarding claims about election results, census participation, or political candidate eligibility based on age or birthplace that contradict official government records, as well as clarify that our policy extends to manipulating media to deceive, defraud, or mislead others."

Plus, Google starting on December 3, 2019 will expand the coverage of its election advertising transparency to include U.S. state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures, and ads that mention federal or state political parties, so that all of those ads will now be searchable and viewable as well.

Google said it will "begin enforcing this change for election ads in the U.K. within a week, in the EU by the end of the year, and in the rest of the world where advertiser verification is required to run election ads starting on January 6, 2020."

Clearly, Google is trying to get ahead of the issues around political ads before the big elections.

Forum discussion at Twitter.