YouTube Bans Election Ads On Its Homepage But Misses The Point

There has been a lot of discussion among advertising and marketing media about the recent move from YouTube to ban certain types of ads from the highly visible top spot on the YouTube homepage. Honestly, it’s a bit like going on a diet by promising yourself you won’t eat a full size donut, only a dozen smaller donut holes instead. In other words ... meaningless. If an ad is misleading or outright lying or selling an addictive product and you’re going to ban it, then ban it everywhere.

When it comes to political ads, I have long believed that they should be completely banned, but since they are so profitable, that’s unlikely. A compromise that more platforms could consider is to ban all political ads that mention an opponent (ie, all attack ads). It’s an easy common sense fix to the plague of false, misleading and evil political ads we typically see. After all, Adidas can’t run an ad talking about how much Nike sucks (or hire a shady Super PAC to do it for them) so why should political campaigns get away with the same thing? The world would be better if we forced politicians to talk about themselves and their plans instead of paying to tell lies about their opponent.