The Value of Your Vote: Elections and Effective Online Advertising
I have been following the effective (or ineffective) use of current online advertising technologies during presidential campaigns for quite some time. In 2008, the presidential candidates started dipping their toes into using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and both campaigns jumped on the social media bandwagon. A quick search this year on who to vote for has both candidates advertising, with Romney taking the top spot.
Encouraged by the use of PPC advertising this year, I decided to see if candidates have adopted a remarketing/retargeting strategy. By visiting campaign websites and then checking AdsFollow.me, it does look like some of the local candidates for U.S. Senate have picked up on re-targeting. However, the presidential campaigns are not there. This is surprising. It seems like candidates would make the connection that it’s important to keep one’s name in front of potential voters who have visited a campaign website.
My guess is that in the coming years, we’ll see a more focused push by both parties to implement a global, cross-campaign retargeting strategy. The primary objective will focus on tracking visitors across all candidates’ individual sites, general party sites, as well as partnered issues sites to set cookies and deliver locally targeted and issue relevant ads. Programs will likely make the effort to connect potential voters with ads by looking at what issues appear most important based on their site traffic.
Until that time, I guess we’ll continue to suffer through the non-targeted onslaught of over-priced political TV attack campaigns.
With the passage of time this kind of marketing and advertising will increase in politics as we know that in this election media and marketing agencies are playing vital role to make people’s opinion.
True, but I think it is the Advertising and Marketing Agencies that are playing catch-up on the newest online technologies.