By Emily Glazer and Jeff Horwitz
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (May 24, 2019).
Facebook Inc. said it stopped paying commissions to employees
who sell political ads, as the tech giant overhauls how it engages
with campaigns ahead of elections in 2020.
Once seen as a growth area, political ads are now viewed within
Facebook as more of a headache, according to former employees and
campaign staffers who work on digital strategies. In the wake of
revelations about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election,
senior leaders at the company debated whether it should cease
running political ads entirely, former employees familiar with the
discussions said. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg made the final
call to stay in the business, though changes will be made to how it
operates, one former employee said.
Scrutiny of Facebook's role in the political process has only
intensified over the past 18 months, with allegations that its
platforms have been used for attempted election manipulation
efforts on six continents.
Facebook's new approach to political ad sales is designed to
eliminate incentives for employees to push a more-is-better
strategy with campaigns. The ad-buying portal for campaigns is now
largely self-serve, with Facebook staffers available to help
campaigns register to buy ads, assist if certain ads are stuck in
review and provide other basic customer service. Sales employees
are no longer paid based on reaching or exceeding goals related to
ads purchased promoting either a candidate or politically tinged
messages in the U.S. and abroad, said Katie Harbath, Facebook's
global elections public policy director.
Employees who previously could earn commissions have had their
base salaries increased to compensate for the changes, said a
former Facebook employee. The company declined to discuss specifics
about compensation.
Ms. Harbath said the company views its political-ad business as
a civic responsibility rather than a revenue driver. The company
declined to comment on whether that business is profitable on its
own.
The changes are in effect from national to local levels to avoid
any impression that Facebook is giving any candidates or campaigns
preferential treatments.
"It doesn't matter if you're running for president or running
for city council. You have access to the same tools and level of
support," Ms. Harbath said.
To be sure, while some presidential campaigns have noticed a
change in service compared with previous election cycles, there are
still some designated Facebook employees who they coordinate with
beyond the self-service portal, digital-campaign staffers said.
Facebook's new political-ad model is a sharp change from the
2016 election, in which it and digital rival Google both offered
extensive advertising advice to the Trump and Clinton campaigns.
Trump's campaign, with a smaller and generally less experienced
digital staff, took up the companies' offers to a greater
degree.
Facebook staffers hired from the Republican and Democratic
political worlds advised on big-picture fundraising and
voter-targeting strategies. And in at least one instance, Facebook
employees wrote potential Trump campaign ads, according to a person
familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Wall Street
Journal. Following Trump's 2016 election victory, the campaign's
digital advertising director, Gary Coby, tweeted that Facebook
"helped us quickly learn path to max $$$ and message," singling out
one Facebook staffer, James Barnes, as its "MVP."
Last fall, Facebook said it would no longer embed staffers in
presidential campaigns.
In 2016, Alphabet Inc.'s Google held brainstorming sessions with
presidential campaigns, offered them tips on rapid-response
communications strategies after debates and gave candidates the
ability to insert information about themselves into "cards" shown
prominently in search results at no cost. Two people familiar with
Google's political advertising operation said they were unaware of
any plans to change the compensation structure for its employees
ahead of the 2020 elections. Google declined to comment.
The market for such ads is growing rapidly: Borrell Associates
Inc. found political digital advertising jumped to $1.4 billion in
2016 from $159 million in 2012. It is projected to hit $3.3 billion
in 2020.
Trump 2020 campaign chairman Brad Parscale recently predicted
his campaign would spend as much as $1 billion on its overall
reelection effort.
Political advertising accounts for a small slice of Facebook's
business, which booked more than $55 billion in revenue last year.
In the 2018 midterm elections, about $284 million was spent on
Facebook out of roughly $623 million on digital political
advertising, according to estimates by Tech for Campaigns, a
nonprofit that builds technology tools and provides tech talent
geared toward progressive and centrist campaigns.
Maximizing revenue may not be the point, said Daniel Kreiss, a
University of North Carolina political science professor who wrote
critically about the help Facebook, Google and Twitter Inc. gave to
presidential candidates in 2016.
"You're seeing a company saying that the ways they were entwined
with the political field was deeply problematic," he said of
Facebook. Eliminating commissions means "fewer incentives for
Facebook staff to try to get the most ad spend and engagement,
regardless of social costs."
In a 2017 paper, Mr. Kreiss found that Google, Facebook and
Twitter approached 2016 political advertising in roughly the same
fashion, with the companies offering equal support to both
Democrats and Republicans. The companies viewed the work as both
lucrative and politically valuable, he said.
Google and Twitter were also subject to manipulation attempts,
but Facebook's size and questions about misuse of data siphoned
from the platform meant it took the brunt of the public
backlash.
Beginning with the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections,
Facebook launched a searchable public database of political
advertisements, and it now employs 500 people on election teams in
Menlo Park, Calif., Dublin and Singapore.
"Our principles have been that we protect and care about the
democratic process and its integrity," Ms. Harbath said. "We don't
want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy."
Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company would invest in staff
to manually review political ads, work that he predicted would make
the business a money-loser. The company said this week its review
process includes a mix of humans and automation.
Facebook's broader shift has had a beneficial impact on smaller
local campaigns, which as recently as earlier this year struggled
to get the company's staffers to help with glitches in the
political advertising registration process, said Patrick O'Keefe,
executive director of the Maryland Republican Party. That help is
more available now, he said, even though many of the campaigns that
he works with don't spend enough to warrant Facebook's
attention.
"I don't know how you make money on some of these races," he
said.
--Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 24, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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