Twitter has announced that political advertisements will be allowed back on the platform, despite a ban on this type of advertising in 2019. The move comes as the company seeks to increase its revenue amid advertiser hesitancy.

Twitter Lifts Ban on Political Advertising

The announcement was made on 3 January 2023 by the Twitter Support account. The announcement noted that Twitter will be relaxing its ads policy for "cause-based" ads in the United States. In the next few weeks, the company will also expand the political advertising that is allowed on the platform.

The new policy will also align with TV and other media outlets, according to Twitter. The company said that it would share more details in the future.

At the time of writing, the old policy is still reflected on the Twitter Business support page for political content. The old policy states:

"Twitter globally prohibits the promotion of political content. We have made this decision based on our belief that political message reach should be earned, not bought."

The only exemptions under this policy were news publishers who met exemption criteria and were advertising content that referenced political content. However, advocating for or against political topics or advertisers was not allowed in ads by news publishers.

A Twitter Business support page on cause-based advertising states that advertisers that only target US users are exempted from the restrictions around cause-based advertising. According to The Verge, an earlier cache of the page showed that this point was a recent change to the website.

Twitter defines cause-based advertising as "ads that educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes".

The change comes amid a range of other tweaks to the platform and its policies. This includes a new public impressions counter for tweets. But not all changes are well-received. Twitter also banned competitor links then reversed the policy following backlash from users.

A New Era for Twitter Advertising

It's unclear what other changes will be made to the policies around political ads and advertising of causes. But one thing's for sure, they're making a comeback on Twitter.