Kamala Harris’s team has provoked backlash for its practice of running Google ad campaigns featuring manipulated headlines from published news articles to make them appear more favorable to her campaign.
The headlines which appear on Google as sponsored posts link to articles about Harris and her rival, Donald Trump, in nearly a dozen publications, most of which have confirmed they had no idea their headlines were being repurposed and used in a political campaign.
Harris’s spin doctors tweaked the original published headlines, and the accompanying text underneath, to make them appear on face value on Google’s search platform as if they’d been written more in the vice president’s favor. The ads included a link to the original stories.
Harris’ campaign team has edited headlines from nearly a dozen outlets including The Independent, Guardian, Reuters, CNN, AP, and CBS News, according to an analysis from Axios. Technically, it doesn’t violate Google’s terms and conditions because the content is labeled as “sponsored.” However, readers could be left confused about who actually wrote the hyper-partisan headlines.
A spokesperson for The Independent condemned the practice: “It is entirely wrong for anyone to put fake headlines under The Independent brand. We object fiercely and believe it is undermining of what politics and journalism should be about. It is misleading to muddle fake headlines with any campaign trying to persuade people to vote in an election, and must be widely condemned. We will be seeking their removal.”
Regulations surrounding political advertising are murky. But Harris’s campaign may be pushing boundaries, says Kartij Ahuja, who founded Delaware-based marketing company GrowthScribe.
“The regulations are complex and confusing, which gives political parties the confidence to push boundaries and take advantage of lax enforcement,” he said.
“In theory, campaigners should seek permission from content owners before publishing it but Google doesn’t require advertisers to prove that they’ve taken the permission. This loophole allows political parties to repurpose content without explicit consent from the publisher.”
The type of advertising attached to this tactic is known as pay per click (PPC): a highly-targeted means of reaching audiences based on their location and search behavior with the ads appearing at the top of Google results.
The maximized visibility and ability to target specific sectors of the electorate is “gold” for the Harris’ campaign, Ahuja said.
According to data from Google Ad Transparency Center, Harris for President’s ad campaign spent between $6,000 and $7,000 on the Google ad featuring a headline appearing to be from The Independent that had been heavily edited in her favor.
The campaign ran two iterations of a headline: “VP Harris Protects Democracy – Trump Defends Jan 6 Comments” and “Trump Will Pardon J6 Rioters – VP Harris Protects Democracy.” People from Pennsylvania, aged 18 to 65+ were targeted with the two iterations of the advert between August 2 to August 13. It was shown between 25,000 to 30,000 times, according to the Google Ad Transparency Center.
The revelation that the campaign has been editing headlines prompted backlash from news publications.
A spokesperson for the Associated Press said they were “neither aware of this practice nor would we allow these to run on our website”.
USA Today parent group Gannett said in a statement: “We were not aware the Harris campaign was using our content in this manner. As a news organization, we are committed to ensuring that our stories are shared appropriately, adhering to the highest standards of integrity and accuracy.”
Former journalist-turned-digital marketing expert noted that the Harris campaign was essentially “passing off these constructed headlines as real news” using the “sponsored” marking as a scapegoat.
“We have obviously seen a lot of this type of thing following the rise of AI technology but not so much with political parties blatantly editing headlines in ads to make them look like real news,” digital marketing director at SCS Marketing & PR Steve Skerry said.
The Trump campaign is said to have not been employing this tactic, according to data provided on Google Ad Transparency Center.
The Harris’ campaign team has not responsed to requests for comment.
A Google spokesperson told Axios the campaign’s ads don’t violate its rules and insisted they are “easily distinguishable from Search results” because they’re labeled as “sponsored.”
“We’ve provided additional levels of transparency for election ads specifically,” the spokesperson added.