Trump to take over YouTube homepage with ads on election day
Ad campaign likely to have cost vast amount of money
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump's ads will take over the YouTube homepage on election day.
The Trump campaign has bought the rights to take over the YouTube masthead as Americans head to the polls in November.
The specifics of what will show in the space and how has not been revealed. It is also not clear how much the campaign paid for the space, but it is likely to be at least many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Trump ads were first revealed by Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Youtube did not confirm any details about the takeover, but suggested that the ability to buy ads is "common" and would be available to other campaigns.
"It’s common for political advertisers across the political spectrum to buy YouTube masthead ad space during election cycles," a YouTube spokesperson said. "In the past, campaigns, PACs, and other political groups have run various types of ads leading up to election day.
"All advertisers follow the same process and are welcome to purchase the masthead space as long as their ads comply with our policies.”
YouTube's ad guidelines require that posts keep to the Google Ads policies but also its Community Guidelines, which govern all of the content that is made available on the site. It is also understood to apply extra guidelines to ads that appear on the homepage because of their high profile.
Ads – including those on the masthead – are sold on a first come, first serve basis and can run for the full day, according to YouTube.
A number of campaigns have already bought such masthead ads: the Bloomberg campaign as well as Trump bought them last year, and Obama, Trump and the Hillary Clinton campaign have all run them in previous elections.
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