Microsoft Advertising

Report March 2025

Submitted
Commitment 5
Relevant Signatories commit to apply a consistent approach across political and issue advertising on their services and to clearly indicate in their advertising policies the extent to which such advertising is permitted or prohibited on their services.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 5.1
In line with this commitment, did you deploy new implementation measures (e.g. changes to your terms of service, new tools, new policies, etc)?
No
If yes, list these implementation measures here
Not applicable 
Do you plan to put further implementation measures in place in the next 6 months to substantially improve the maturity of the implementation of this commitment?
No
If yes, which further implementation measures do you plan to put in place in the next 6 months?
Not applicable as Microsoft Advertising currently prohibits all political advertising, as outlined under QRE 5.1.1. 
Measure 5.1
Relevant Signatories will apply the labelling, transparency and verification principles (as set out below) across all ads relevant to their Commitments 4 and 5. They will publicise their policy rules or guidelines pertaining to their service's definition(s) of political and/or issue advertising in a publicly available and easily understandable way.
QRE 5.1.1
Relevant Signatories will report on their policy rules or guidelines and on their approach towards publicising them.
Microsoft Advertising policies prohibit ads for election-related content, political candidates, parties, ballot measures and political fundraising globally; similarly, ads aimed at fundraising for political candidates, parties, political action committees (“PACs”), and ballot measures also are barred. All Microsoft and third-party services that rely on Microsoft Advertising to serve advertisements on their platforms benefit from these robustly enforced set of policies. 

Furthermore, Microsoft prohibits political advertising across Microsoft media properties and platforms. Microsoft Advertising’s policies also prohibit certain types of advertisements that might be considered issue-based. More specifically, “advertising that exploits political agendas, sensitive political issues or uses ‘hot button’ political issues or names of prominent politicians is not allowed regardless of whether the advertiser has a political agenda,” and “advertising that exploits sensitive political [or religious] issues for commercial gain or promote extreme political or extreme religious agendas or any known associations with hate, criminal or terrorist activities” is also prohibited.

See here: