Google takes a match to political ad targeting, now Facebook feels the heat too

Google’s move to curb abuses in online political advertising has sparked a debate about one of ad land’s most-effective targeting tools, known as “customer match,” where marketers serve messages directly to voters based on their email contacts.

Google announced that it was eliminating the ability to use its customer-match tool, which is a favorite tactic of many campaigns. It’s such an effective technique that President Donald Trump’s digital ad team took to Twitter to criticize the proposed steps to curb the practice. “If Hillary [Clinton] would’ve won, these tools would’ve been celebrated,” said Gary Coby, Trump’s digital director, in a tweet on Thursday.

Trump’s camp was concerned this week that Facebook could follow suit by banning “custom audiences” in political advertising. Custom audiences and customer match are similar in that the advertiser brings e-mail lists to the platforms, and they can target ads to those e-mails if that person is logged into Facebook or Google…[Read More]