Johanna Geron | Reuters
Facebook is lifting its temporary post-election ban on political ads on Wednesday in the state of Georgia only, as the state prepares for its Jan. 5 runoff election that will determine which party takes control of the Senate.
Facebook said in a blog post Tuesday that the decision to lift the ban in Georgia came after hearing feedback that candidates and other groups wanted the option to advertise on Facebook to reach voters ahead of the runoff.
“We agree that our ad tools are an important way for people to get information about these elections,” Facebook’s Sarah Schiff wrote in the blog post. “So we have developed a process to allow advertisers to run ads with the purpose of reaching voters in Georgia about Georgia’s runoff elections.”
The company says it will let advertisers authorized to run ads on social issues, elections and politics to run ads in Georgia. It said it will prioritizing onboarding advertisers with “direct involvement in these elections,” and will reject ads that target locations outside Georgia.
The company had put a temporary pause on electoral, political and social issue ads in the U.S. to try to prevent confusion or abuse on its platform, it had previously said, according to emails viewed by CNBC.
Facebook announced in October it would stop running political ads in the U.S. after polls closed for the 2020 election on Nov. 3. But with runoffs for both of Georgia’s Senate seats, groups weren’t able to turn to Facebook to run ads for fundraising or otherwise.
Advertisers told CNBC last month this was preventing groups from raising money from supporters around the country and from educating voters, and was also going to impact year-end fundraising for nonprofits that deal with social issues.
Google lifted its own temporary pause on elections-related advertising last week. The company had banned those ads for a period of time in an attempt to prevent potential exploitation or misinformation via advertising since it expected delayed election results.
This story is developing.
