News Courtesy of Microsoft.com:
In recent months, regulators from states across the country have taken new steps to bring additional transparency and accountability to political advertising. We support these regulators and their crucial work on important issues. The regulatory environment for political candidate and ballot measure advertising is likely to continue to evolve rapidly in the coming months, making it complex to adhere with precision. As result, we have made the decision to disallow political candidate and ballot measure ads in the United States. These ads make up a very small percentage of Bing’s advertising volume. Beginning today, we will not accept any new ads in this space and will be working in the coming weeks to remove any ads already running.
Ryan’s Take 
This is in stark contrast to Google’s decision on providing more transparency for political ads on their platform. Google, which has been accused of being biased towards left-leaning media outlets, launched a website that tracks ad spending by state. According to this transparency report, millions of dollars have already been spent on promoting various candidates in the U.S. Clicking on the many advertisers listed shows details on roughly how many views have occurred per advertisement as well as how much that ad cost.
It seems like Bing wants to maintain a neutral and impartial stance when it comes to politics. Since political fervor typically rises dramatically during an election season, it makes sense for Bing to announce this policy change now. Also, the fact that political ads make up a small portion of the total ad revenue generated for Bing, should help to offset any losses.
I can’t help but notice that Bing has stepped up their game over the last couple of years. Since they took over Yahoo search, their market share has steadily increased. No one in their right mind would say they are poised to dethrone Google. However, things might get interesting with the rise of voice search. There’s also the slight possibility of search engines being federally regulated at some point in the future. For now, Bing appears to be taking the safe and cautious approach.
