Summary
Indian politicians and political parties are not buying ads on Twitter yet, while money is being pumped on a large scale into Facebook advertising. It is partly because Twitter is less transparent in showing details about political ads and is less popular than Facebook in India. On March 11, Twitter rolled out its Ad Transparency Centre: an archive that shows the promoted tweets that have been run over the past week. This initiative is an attempt to boost transparency ahead of the Indian
Highlights:
- Facebook which recently rolled out its own ad archive shows the stark difference in numbers being spent on the promotion of political ads on its platform compared to Twitter. Around 70 per cent of this advertising has come from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliated parties.
- Political campaign ads in the archive according to Twitter will also reflect details of the target audience demographics. Further, if any promoted tweet is found to violate Twitter's guidelines, the transparency centre will also list the reason for its suspension.
- Twitter's current portal does not provide easy ways to access troubling, polarising content especially ones being run by unverified or little known accounts. Its political content policy requires organisations to submit certain identification documents.
- Twitter’s archive only displays ads that have run over the course of the past seven days, while Facebook’s allows users to see all ads that a particular page has run.