Written by washingtonpost.com's tech policy team, the e-mail version of this weekly feature includes an original news article and links to policy and cyber-security stories from the previous week. • Click Here for Free Sign-up • Read E-letter Archive
"There is still a decent amount of skepticism among political campaigns about the value of the Web as a political advertising vehicle, and we're trying to overcome that by making online advertising as attractive and easy to get their arms around as possible," said washingtonpost.com spokesman Don Marshall.
The New York Times's Web site runs campaign ads in its "general news stories and section fronts," as well as on its home page, said Jason R. Krebs, vice president of sales and marketing.
America Online has earned a reputation among political advertisers for being especially choosy about political ads, sometimes sending them back for rewrites or flat-out rejecting them.
"We have shied away from running the more gratuitous ad-hominem attack ads," said spokesman Andrew Weinstein. "We do accept political ads, but they must ... meet with our broader community standards."
AOL's community standards forbid content that attacks ethnic or religious groups and bar unsubstantiated attacks against individuals, Weinstein said.
Microsoft's MSN.com staff vets ads for credibility before they run, said Cyrus Krohn, publisher and political advertising manager for Slate.com, MSN's online magazine. MSN's policy applies to other Microsoft properties such as MSNBC.com.
Krohn said the site reserves the right to reject any ad it feels is in poor taste or fails to meet its community standards. MSN.com has rejected one political ad during this election cycle, a spot sponsored by an anti-abortion group that Krohn would not identify. "If we vet the ad and are comfortable with it, I don't think we'd distinguish between a puff ad and an attack ad. I mean, feel good, feel bad, but feel something," Krohn said.
Yahoo.com, which ran almost no political ads in 2000, accepted ads this year from the Kerry and Bush campaigns as well from political advocacy groups. The company will not run any political ads in the 24-hour window before the polls open on Election Day in November, a policy it shares with CNN.com and AOL.
Yahoo also is debating whether it will allow political ads to appear anywhere on its homepage. The company requires political advertisers to state who paid for the ad in at least 9-point type.
Online Ad Rules in the Making?
Campaign strategists said the differing policies among news Web sites have made it harder for them to spend their advertising dollars online.
