The Homa Files

Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal “Facebook Political Ads Test Limits” September 15, 2008 

Political parties and interest groups have long cherry-picked news stories that promote their agenda to feature in campaign ads. But some new ads popping up on Facebook take that tactic to a new level.

“AP Says: Palin Lied,” reads one ad, accompanied by an unflattering photo of the vice presidential candidate. Another ad — accompanied by the same photo — reads, “Washington Post breaks ANOTHER Palin scandal. Charging tax payers for her sleeping at home”…

Clicking on the ads takes visitors straight to a story on the Web sites of those publications…

But none of the publications cited in the ads bought them — or even was aware of them. The buyer — though never identified anywhere on the ads or on the pages that you land on after clicking on them — is the liberal group MoveOn.org. It’s the latest example of fuzziness about who’s behind what when it comes to political ads online…

Facebook says the ads comply with its policies…With Facebook’s self-service advertising system, anybody can log on to the site and create an ad. The site allows advertisers to select the text for the ad as well as a picture and the Web site to point consumers to. Most ads are bought through a cost-per-click model, so advertisers only pay if a person clicks on the ad.

Advertisers can pick specific groups of people who will see their ad, and they bid a certain amount to have their ads shown to target groups.

Edit by SAC

* * * * * 
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB122143365240034005.html

* * * * *

Want more from the Homa Files?
Click link => The Homa Files Blog

This entry was posted on September 30, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under Internet - Soc Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.