YouTube banning politics, elections in masthead ads

YouTube will ban political and election-related ads in its masthead starting Monday, the company said. 

The update is part of a larger change to YouTube’s advertising policy that will also ban the company from accepting bookings for the YouTube masthead from ads related to gambling, alcohol and prescription drugs. 

“We regularly review our advertising requirements to ensure they balance the needs of both advertisers and users. Today, we are updating those requirements to limit the categories of ads that are eligible to run on YouTube masthead inventory. We believe this update will build on changes we made last year to the masthead reservation process and will lead to a better experience for users,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. 

The change will limit candidates from elected office from placing ads in the large rectangular ad box at the top of YouTube’s homepage. 

The update was first reported by Axios. 

Google’s latest change follows one the company put in place last year when it discontinued full-day masthead reservations.

Google’s masthead content requirements are more restrictive than the ad requirements across other platforms, meaning that ads disapproved to run in the YouTube masthead may continue to run on other Google owned and operated properties, according to the company’s support website.