What to Know About Misleading Google Ads for Political Campaigns

After AllSides first discovered that Google was allowing the Harris campaign to place misleading ads in its search results, our discovery was picked up by Axios (Lean Left bias) and the story was discussed everywhere from Fox News (Right) to CNN (Lean Left). Meanwhile, AllSides team members were debating the crux of the story, and misconceptions were running rampant.

Here’s everything you need to know about this story and our internal debates:

• The ads are 100% legal and allowed by Google

The Harris campaign has operated fully within the bounds of Google’s ad practices. Linking to news sites’ content and changing how the original headline appears in the search results is allowed, according to Google.

“These ads are explicitly labeled as ‘Sponsored’ so that they’re easily distinguishable from Search results and they also include ‘Paid for by’ disclosures so it’s clear to users who paid for them,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner (Lean Right). “It’s fairly common for advertisers to link out to or cite external websites, including news sites, in their ads.”

“This is a Google issue and not really a Harris issue,” said AllSides co-founder Scott McDonald (Center). “The real story is that Google allows manipulation of third party news headlines - which we find toxic.”

“The Harris campaign’s use of these tactics is relevant and impactful in this election cycle, but it’s only half of the story,” said AllSides content intern Kai Lincke, who was the first to discover the misleading ads. “It’s crucial for readers to understand that this is a misleading strategy that Google allows any campaign to use — and they may see it employed in their congressional, state or local elections.”

• Some ads reportedly lacked labels required by Google

Most of the ads say “Paid for by Harris for President.” But some lacked that label.

A technical glitch in Google's Ad Library made some ads appear without disclosures Google requires, a company spokesperson told Axios. "Election advertisers are required to complete an identity verification process, and we prominently display in-ad disclosures that clearly show people who paid for the ad," the spokesperson said.

This is how most of the ads appeared, with mention of the Harris campaign: 

But others may not have. In the below screenshot, you can see that the ad doesn’t say “Paid for by Harris for President.” 

AllSides took these screenshots in the Google Ads Transparency Center, rather than in search results, so they may have appeared differently for certain users. Regardless, a Google spokesperson confirmed the glitch and said it's investigating what happened.

Even for those ads that did have labels, many felt they could be misconstrued.

“This is misleading, and even though ads were marked as ‘Sponsored’ or ‘Paid for by Harris for President,’ I imagine some – even many – users thought the text was attributed to the outlet itself,” said AllSides Research Manager Andrew Weinzierl (Lean Left).

• Many news media professionals dislike the practice

“What it’s about is confusion and deception,” read a quote from Jane Kirtley, a media ethics professor at the University of Minnesota. She added that the outlets’ content is “being co-opted for political advertising without permission or prior knowledge… It’s fine if they chose to endorse someone, but you don’t want your reporting to be turned into an endorsement.”

“AP’s journalism is independent, fact-based and non-partisan and must not be misrepresented in any way,” AP spokesman Patrick Maks said.

“I think it’s hitting a line, and candidly I don’t think Google or the Harris campaign should go near a line that is tied to news sources,” said Rich Hanley, Quinnipiac University associate professor of journalism emeritus. “What they are actually doing is manipulating someone else’s content by changing headlines. There should be a clear and bright line when it comes to news organizations.”

“We have reached out to the Harris campaign requesting they represent our content in a manner that accurately upholds USA TODAY’s unbiased reporting and complies with our ethical standards,” read a statement posted to X by USA TODAY PR.

• Many digital marketing voices think it’s normal

This style of advertising “is common in commercial marketing,” The New Republic (Left) reported.

“This is part of paid advertising,” said CNN contributor Kate Bedingfield. “There’s nothing about it that violates their terms or is in any way unethical. This is part of the way paid advertising works.”

“Harris camp doing nothing wrong and Google, which is pretty strict about banning spammy ads, doesn’t see it as a consumer harm. News outlets just collateral damage in this weird ads tactic,” an Axios reporter wrote on X.

“As a digital marketer, I’d like to clarify/probably reiterate what someone else has shared that Google’s ad labels are *not* controlled by an advertiser so pointing out the ‘small disclaimer’ has everything to do with how Google chooses to present sponsored content/advertisements,” read a comment on our Instagram account.

“FWIW, this is a very common digital advertising tactic used by campaigns on both sides of the aisle for years...and they're clearly marked as sponsored by Harris for President,” tech reporter Kyle Tharp said on X.

But this explanation didn’t satisfy some. “I think it shouldn’t matter if digital marketing people are saying this is normal practice,” said AllSides News and Bias Assistant Olivia Geno (Lean Right). “It shouldn’t be normal — in my opinion, it's unethical. Journalists are tasked with attempting to provide the best information/facts to the public so that people can make informed decisions. Although many news companies provide biased information, no third party should choose to further blur the lines between fact and opinion — and that is precisely what this tactic allows politicians to do.”

• Other platforms have outlawed similar ad practices

Meta has banned advertisers from using similar tactics on Facebook and Instagram. And in 2017, Facebook cracked down on “instances of Pages using Facebook ads to build their audiences in order to distribute false news more broadly.”

• Other Democrats and Republicans have used this same tactic

The Harris campaign isn’t the first to use the tactic.

“A review of Google’s Ad Transparency Center shows the campaigns of Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Mike Braun (R-IN), Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), and former Illinois GOP Rep. Rodney Davis used the tactic against political rivals, promoting media stories but crafting their own display headlines and subtexts to either bolster themselves or tarnish their opponents,” according to the Washington Examiner.

Republicans aren’t the only ones using this tactic against each other. According to SFist, it’s also happening between Democratic mayoral candidates in San Francisco:

If you do any Google searching on SF mayoral candidate Mark Farrell, you might see some shocking headlines. For instance, you may see a search result for a San Francisco Chronicle article that appears to have the headline “Mark Farrell Ethics Violation - Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.” Or you may see a result pointing to an SF Standard article with the blunt headline “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.”

This is curious, because neither the Chronicle nor the SF Standard has ever published any articles with the headline “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell,” nor any of the words that Google makes it look like these articles say. These are links to real articles published in the SF Standard and Chronicle, but Google allows political campaigns (in this case, the Daniel Lurie for Mayor campaign) to replace headlines and preview text in the search results, to make it appear as if respected publications are declaring “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.”

“AllSides would have pointed out this deceptive practice no matter which aspiring presidential camp was doing it,” said AllSides Director of Marketing and Bias Ratings Julie Mastrine (Lean Right). 

Why We Did This: Transparency on Our Internal Debate About the Story

During our work on this story, we had spirited debates internally about the framing, word choices, and more, which continued post-publication. Disagreements remain about how we handled it and what the crux of the story is. But the debate also led us to agree unanimously that we need to be transparent about our reporting and what readers should learn from it. 

Here are a few words from various AllSides team members about our handling of this story and takeaways for the audience:

John Gable, co-founder and CEO, Lean Right bias

“Don’t be fooled by bias and misinformation” is what the top of our site says. AllSides reveals bias, misinformation and things that mislead and divide us, so it makes sense that when we discovered this problem, we put it out there for all to see. 

Sometimes when we do this, we get criticized by the right, or the left, or both. That is part of our job. 

From the beginning, we knew this was likely done by both sides, and explicitly pointed that out. There has historically been lots of controversy about political ads that have led to regulations for TV and radio, but online ads don’t have the same regulations. 

Not every campaign does this (most don’t) and not every online platform permits it (Facebook at one point banned this practice). We did research and found no evidence that the Trump campaign was doing the same thing. We explicitly called for all political campaigns to either stop doing it or don’t start. And we also called for Google to ban the practice.

We gave this information to press across the political spectrum. Axios dug deeper, learned more, discussed with experts in digital ads and journalism, and were the first to break the story. Other media from the left, center and right picked it up. 

Things got a little wild. Some news media sources that were misrepresented made public statements expressing concern or outright opposing the practice. The right pushed it hard and some suggested that Google and Harris colluded (no evidence supports this, especially since some Republican candidates did the same thing). Some digital advertising pros and some on the left described it as advertising as usual, as politics as usual, and a non-story. Others fought back to say that it was deceptive and misleading to normal people, so even if the practice is legal or perhaps not that unusual, it is still not OK. 

AllSides often gets in trouble with one side or the other. This time, some on the left thought we were partisan. In the past, like when we used to rate the CNN website as mostly center while the cable tv program was clearly not, it was the right that cried foul.

That will continue to happen here at AllSides. Whether we do things “perfectly” (whatever that means) or make mistakes along the way (which we will surely do), we will get hammered from time to time… from all sides. 

That is OK, and in fact it is good. That is how change happens. AllSides is committed to change that reinvigorates our democratic society, and that includes disagreeing and talking about it.

Scott McDonald, co-founder and CTO (Center)

AllSides doesn’t typically break news. It reports on how the news is being reported. The level of responsibility to break news is higher than for summarizing the output of news sources and adding post hoc commentary pointing out empirical data points. Part of the reason we do this is that we lack reporters who are experienced in breaking original news content. That lack of experience bit us here with the Google Ads story. Had we done our research thoroughly before publishing we would’ve known that politicians other than Harris have used this Google product in the same way in the past. Had we waited a beat before publishing to examine the narrative we were about to create with our word choices and story framing we might have come to the more accurate conclusion that this is a Google issue and not really a Harris issue. The real story was Google allows manipulation of third-party news headlines - which we find toxic. So it pains me deeply that our first foray into breaking a news story is that we injected so much bias into the story which was then propagated across the newsphere. 

Evan Wagner, News Editor and Bias Analyst (Lean Left)

The Harris campaign acted legally but deceptively by misrepresenting ad text as news text, and voters ought to know that and balance it with other factors when deciding which candidate to support. However, it was misleading of us to sometimes say that the ads made it seem like news outlets “endorsed” Harris. “Endorsement” in a news context brings to mind an official declaration of support for a candidate by an editorial board. Here is the New York Times’ 2020 endorsement of Biden, and here is the New York Post’s 2020 endorsement of Trump. The industry-wide standard for such articles is to make very clear in the title and subtitle that they are endorsements.

In colloquial use, “endorsement” may also refer to unofficial statements of praise for a candidate, cause, or policy; but when our goal is to communicate clearly and precisely, more narrow terms should be used when available. In this case, I suggested “direct advocacy for the Harris campaign” to replace “endorsement of the Harris campaign,” which captures the deceitful nature of the ads without the possibility of being confused for an even more deceitful implication. This language was adopted in our blog post, but AllSides used “endorsement” on X and Instagram due to internal miscommunication.

One of the AllSides core tenets that sets us apart is our commitment to ensure content is reviewed by people whose personal biases represent the full left-right spectrum. I was the voice of the left in the editorial process, but that input was not reflected in all of our materials. Our editorial process needs to ensure that the outcomes of our balanced content reviews are consistently implemented across all materials.

All that said, I have faith that all of us at AllSides are committed to providing our readers a fair and informative representation of the media space. That we are willing to make our internal disputes transparent is a strength, never a weakness.

Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right)

AllSides would have pointed out this deceptive practice no matter which aspiring presidential camp was doing it — Harris, Trump, or RFK. The story focused on deceptive ad practices amid the high stakes presidential race.

I believe the term “endorsement” was fine to use — most people know this term means “to express approval of or give support to, especially by public statement,” and does not explicitly refer to newspaper editorial boards declaring support for a candidate.

I am proud of our team for uncovering an issue of media bias/advertising ethics, elevating it to the level of public discourse, and calling for a change to protect consumers. Putting this information out to the public required many hours of research, coordination, internal and external communication, and due diligence. AllSides did the hard work to produce something worthwhile, even if 100% perfection is unattainable.

Henry A. Brechter, Editor-in-chief (Center)

What’s normal and obvious in the digital marketing world isn’t normal and obvious to the average news consumer. This may be a standard practice in advertising, but journalists and news readers seem to agree that these ads, as they’re currently constructed, falsely imply support for Harris from the news outlets whose content is being used, and could easily mislead voters into thinking that major news outlets are more favorable to Harris than they actually are. Google should update its policies to prohibit advertisers from manipulating news content.

In our rush to share this story with the world, we made some missteps in our internal processes, and feedback from some team members was lost in the shuffle when it otherwise wouldn’t have been. But overall, we were successful in bringing attention to what we see as media malpractice.

Kai Lincke, Content Intern (Lean Left)

One of the most critical things I’ve learned as a journalism student is that there are multiple perspectives and layers in every story. I believe some layers were missing from our original coverage of this story.

I think we should have added more information about Google Search ads and Google’s political advertising policies in our original coverage, in addition to providing examples of how the Harris campaign used this technique. I think the original coverage would have been clearer if we had explained that the marketing technique follows the law and Google’s rules. Our original piece characterized this as a new political advertising technique, but I think we should have researched other campaigns’ use of Google Search ads to understand how this technique had been used before. 

As they reported on our investigation, some outlets focused their coverage on questioning Harris’ integrity. The Harris campaign’s use of these tactics is relevant and impactful in this election cycle, but it’s only half of the story. It’s crucial for readers to understand that this is a misleading strategy that Google allows any campaign to use — and they may see it employed in their congressional, state or local elections.

I understand that promoting sponsored news articles is a common marketing tactic, but I believe that advertising for elections is different from advertising for products or services. Election ads influence voters’ understanding of candidates and their policies, and altered headlines from established news sources can mislead voters and sway their political decisions. This also can unfairly damage the public’s relationship with the press, as several of the outlets publicly stated that they didn’t know their stories’ headlines were changed to suggest that they support Harris.

I recognize some gaps in our research and reporting, but I’m proud that we broke this story and increased public awareness of this political marketing strategy. I’m grateful for the opportunity to clarify these details and offer transparency in our research and reporting process. 

Olivia Geno, Content Assistant (Lean Right)

I think AllSides was correct in pointing this out. However, I do somewhat agree with Scott’s point that we should’ve framed it more as a Google issue (knowing what we know now). It is probably important to point out both D and R candidates that have used this tactic in the past. 

At the same time, the Harris campaign knew that they would be changing the titles and descriptions of news articles by using this tactic. I think it is deceitful for any politician to knowingly use the contents of articles without informing the news sources first.

I think it shouldn’t matter if digital marketing people are saying this is normal practice. It shouldn’t be normal — in my opinion, it's unethical. Journalists are tasked with attempting to provide the best information/facts to the public so that people can make informed decisions. Although many news companies provide biased information, no third party should choose to further blur the lines between fact and opinion — and that is precisely what this tactic allows politicians to do. 

Andy Gorel, News Editor and Bias Analyst (Center)

I think AllSides was correct to point this out after discovering it was happening, especially as it’s a media-related story. It’s also a testament to the openness of Google’s Ad Transparency Center that we were able to then further investigate what we had stumbled onto.

Of course, this is a tactic used by digital marketers, but it does feel quite misleading, whether it’s the manipulation of a news article or some other webpage’s title. If the Harris campaign were to link to its own website with an editorialized title, and then include an article from a site like AP on the page, I don’t see a grey area with that. It’s just that the outlet’s logo and domain name show up in the results and it confused even us at AllSides, let alone the average Google user.

The word “endorsement” does have an obvious political connotation, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world that we inadvertently used it in our blog and social promo. The ads absolutely made it look like the outlets linked, or at least a specific article from the outlets, was endorsing Harris.

I don’t think this practice is the huge “gotcha” many Republicans are trying to make it out as, but I do think it’s absolutely newsworthy and a bit greasy from the Harris campaign. Clearly, from the statements offered publicly, USA Today and AP feel similarly.

Andrew Weinzierl, Bias Research Manager and Data Journalist (Lean Left)

The Harris campaign editing headlines and descriptions for advertisements may further enforce someone’s preconceived beliefs about an outlet’s bias – The Guardian, NPR, Associated Press, Reuters, and others whose content was edited and used in advertisements are rated Lean Left or Center by AllSides, but the content was changed to make it appear arguably further left. Not only that, but many of the ads are opinion statements and not something the outlet may argue if its goal is to be balanced in reporting.

For instance, NPR’s headline appeared in an ad as “Harris Will Lower Health Costs” and description as “...Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care.” Nowhere to my recollection did NPR ever make this argument in its reporting. This is misleading, and even though ads were marked as “Sponsored” or "Paid for by Harris for President,” I imagine some – even many – users thought the text was attributed to the outlet itself.

This tactic may only make perception of media bias worse among those who see the ads.

AllSides is committed to transparency about our processes and the viewpoints of our respective team members.