Spotify, the digital streaming platform that features millions of songs and a number of exclusive podcasts, has decided to temporarily suspend political advertisements in 2020. This information comes at an interesting point for ads in the election – a massive ad campaign that aims to completely delegitimatize the sitting president has been enacted by presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg. Also, Democratic candidate Tom Steyer has spent $80 billion on ads for his campaign alone. As far as Spotify goes, Bernie Sanders uses the platform for his advertisements.
In a statement for Ad Age, Spotify said, “[a]t this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.” They also made it clear that this is a temporary decision that they will reconsider. According to Statista‘s 2018 survey, 26% of Spotify users (which is the second largest percentage after millennials) are between the ages of 18 and 25. We can’t help but wonder if the removal of ads will affect Gen Z’s political stances at all.
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