This is out of our hands. Mods do keep political discussions from getting any airtime. Otherwise Friday has the gist of it.
Google places their ads based on multiple criteria. And these vary by region. I bet members not in swing states aren't seeing many political ad buys. Some observations on ad-placing criteria:
- Topics covered by the forum (I'm seeing an Allstate ad and a mattress ad and any number of RV topics)
- General ads (eg, a new car model or credit card or political ad)
- Ads targeted at cookies on your computer (eg, note how many ads are for items you've searched on or browsed recently; eg, electronics, cameras, books, travel. Stay away from those duckling in lingerie sites!)
We have seen gun advocacy ads (general interest) or a very few PG-13 saucy ads that tickle the edge of our Community Rules. There seems to be a Google AdWords filter to control ratings and therefore I've never heard of anything X worthy.
We have not felt it practical to remove a few gun advocacy ads we've seen. Restricting one ad buyer would not prevent a different buyer (election committee, party or PAC) from distributing a different political ad. That will all be over in 6 weeks. So AIR finds itself in the same position as 'The Good Wife' (and just as popular I dare say) -- watching the program doesn't give us control over the ad content.
Some of us might go through this election period without seeing a single political ad. Randy, if you don't want to publicize by posting a screen shot (PrtSc on a PC, then paste into something like paint, save as a jpeg), you could always send a copy of what you see on the screen to us through the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of the page. We could review it.