The College Fix, by Elise Degeeter: The University of Dallas, a Catholic university, is facing repeated ad censorship from tech giants Google and Meta, sparking growing concerns over bias against faith-based institutions.
Despite the Texas university’s efforts to comply with advertising policies, Google has persistently blocked ads for its graduate program, while Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – disabled ad account access for its digital marketing partner, according to information the university provided to The College Fix.
Clare Venegas, vice president of marketing at the university, expressed frustration with these platforms’ inconsistent policies and their impact on Catholic institutions.
“For some reason, Google continues to claim that they’re blocking us for religious reasons, when none of the College of Business ads have religious content in them,” Venegas told The College Fix in a recent on-campus interview.
According to documents reviewed by The Fix, Google blocked nine of the university’s paid ads, claiming a violation of its policy on “religious content for personalized advertising” that does not “allow targeting users based on identity and belief.”
“The ads don’t have anything to do with Catholic identity,” Venegas said, pointing out that the nine ads include general promotions like “Core Curriculum Ad” and “Student Life.”
This follows a similar incident in 2023, she said, when a short brand video was rejected for allegedly violating the same policy by referencing “personal religious beliefs.”
Google’s media relations office did not respond to two emailed requests for comment on its policy, including whether it has ensured its ad review process is enforced consistently across institutions, regardless of religious affiliation.
Hugh Macken is president and founder of VMR Communications, a marketing firm that specializes in reaching Catholic audiences and has managed several of the university’s past campaigns.
He led the appeal process with Google in both 2023 and 2024 after ads were blocked for using terms like “Catholic faith” and “Christ.”
In an email between Macken and Google, reviewed by The Fix, Macken wrote that the ads were not intended to “target people based on their religious beliefs, but rather, on their likelihood to be interested in the University of Dallas, which is a Catholic-affiliated university.”
The issue hasn’t been limited to Google.
Macken told The Fix that in August 2024, Meta quietly disabled his access to the University of Dallas ad account, almost immediately after he applied to run pro-life political ads for another client.
“Despite more than 6 months of phone calls, live sessions, and email threads, Meta has still not given me a specific reason as to why they have disabled my access,” Macken said in a recent email, adding that others on his team are still able to access the agency’s account.
“The restriction is specifically targeted to me personally and has resulted in my inability to use any of my marketing agency’s Meta ad accounts and those of our Catholic and prolife clients,” he told The Fix.
Venegas expressed concerns that other faith-based institutions are also being censored online.
“If I look at our marketing metrics and how people find our website, it’s primarily through organic search. What we’re trying to do with paid advertising on Google is reach people who are already searching for what we offer,” Venegas told The Fix.
“But Google is essentially a monopoly when it comes to search, and that’s part of the problem. A lot of conservative or religious groups face real challenges here — the evidence seems to show that we’re disproportionately blocked from advertising,” she said.
Venegas said it may be time to push back more directly, appealing to the public sphere or Congressional members.
“Google support has not been helpful, so we are planning to contact our member of Congress,” she said. “We just have to elevate this to the public sphere and see what can be done to address it from a policy standpoint.
“Sometimes it just takes them to put some pressure on the companies to solve some of the problems,” Venegas said.
Prophetic Link:
“When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, page 451.
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