The 2012 US presidential primaries, which have now passed Super Tuesday, continue to demonstrate the power of the latest advertising techniques and technologies. This second installment in our series focuses on mobile and online advertising in the primaries so far.
For the first time in US presidential election history, mobile advertising has become part of the political campaign toolkit. Its entry seemed inevitable, considering that 48% of US mobile consumers now use smartphones (according to Nielsen). But campaign managers are more interested in the ability of mobile advertising to target specific slices of the electorate than its emerging ubiquity. The Romney campaign, for example, used zip-code targeting assistance from mobile ad network Jumptap to run mobile ads in districts with high percentages of supporters. Another campaign took microtargeting still further by limiting distribution to small university towns.
As in previous presidential primaries, candidates are engaging voters on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. However, this engagement now includes targeted advertising like Promoted Tweets, Facebook Adsand Google AdWords. Candidates are purchasing their own names as keywords, for example, so that Promoted Tweets appear every time their names are searched on Twitter. And the ads are being linked to everything from negative news about President Obama to pages seeking donations. Highly cost effective, Promoted Tweets enable precision targeting and require payment only when users click, favorite or otherwise interact with them. Social media advertising companies like Socialitical are even springing up to take advantage of the trend.
To maximize the reach and impact of television commercials, which still receive the majority of campaign ad spending, candidates and their supporters are releasing them on websites like YouTube and Hulu. This dissemination strategy proved especially effective in the case of a highly controversial film called “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” that generated huge interest on the Internet before being aired in South Carolina. By effectively identifying Romney with “greedy” corporate elite – just as his popularity was peaking – it swayed public opinion and handed victory to another candidate in that state.
Please join us again in May for the third part of our series on advertising techniques and technologies in the 2012 US presidential election.
Survey: New U.S. Smartphone Growth by Age and Income
(Nielsenwire)
Jumptap
Promoted Tweets
http://business.twitter.com/advertise/promoted-tweets/
Facebook Advertising
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Google AdWords
Socialitical
http://www.getsocialitical.com/
When Mitt Romney Came To Town
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