By EMILY STEELSeptember 15, 2008; Page B5
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." Another with a picture of John McCain grimacing reads, "Time's Joe Klein has had enough of McCain's dishonorable campaign lies. A must read."
Clicking on the ads takes visitors straight to a story on the Web sites of those publications. People who click on the ad that reads "WSJ Says: Palin Lied," for instance, are directed to a story on The Wall Street Journal Web site about the contradictions in Gov. Palin's record regarding the "Bridge to Nowhere."
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.
"We thought we'd seen the full gamut of creative ways people have found for calling attention to online content they want others to see," said Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP. "Buying an ad with a provocative teaser line and a link to an AP story is a new one."
The news organizations expressed concern that readers might think they are behind the ads and that they are favoring one candidate over another in their news coverage. "We are concerned about any ad that could appear as though it was sponsored by our company when it was not," Goli Sheikholeslami, general manager of the washingtonpost.com, said.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed it didn't buy the ads but declined to comment further.
Facebook says the ads comply with its policies. "Facebook allows advertising that advocates both for and against candidates and follows standard industry practices for acceptable content," Facebook spokesman Matt Hicks said.
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. The minimum daily budget is $5. The Federal Election Commission usually requires marketers in political ads to identify themselves somewhere on the ad, but it makes a number of exemptions, including situations where the identifier cannot be conveniently printed. That usually applies to items like pens, pins and bumper stickers but also has included text messages, which are limited to using 160 characters.
MoveOn says it doesn't need to identify itself on the ads because the space is too small -- Facebook limits ads to 25 characters for the title and 135 for the body -- and the destination page is the news article itself.
MoveOn started buying the ads Sept. 5 and has thus far purchased at least a dozen different variations. It isn't buying similar ads elsewhere on the Web. MoveOn says the ads have gotten a good response, with a number of people clicking on them.
MoveOn says it has the right to link to the stories in its ads because, it says, they are in the public domain, and the news outlets haven't contacted it about removing the ads.
