When the Democratic National Committee (DNC) introduced individual donor thresholds earlier this year for candidates to qualify for primary debates, it was trying to empower campaigns with grassroots support. But these new rules have also created a massive online audience acquisition spree. The first round of debates was relatively easy to qualify for – with […]
A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…
Digital media and advertising expertise is moving up the political campaign hierarchy. The most direct example is Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s director of digital in 2016, who was made campaign manager for the 2020 reelection effort. But digital advertising is now the largest media expenditure for every major campaign on both sides of the […]
A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…
Big Tech can’t catch a break in DC … actually, scratch that. If Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is elected to the White House in 2020, she’s got a plan to break up Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. And her proposal specifically targets Google’s ad platform business. On Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate laid out how her […]
The 2016 election was a disaster for the reputations of political pollsters, many of whom missed badly. With the midterm elections now in the bag, how well did the pre-election surveys match Tuesday’s results? Pretty well, actually. Public polls and data aggregators like FiveThirtyEight were, broadly speaking, closer to the mark in 2018 than they […]
With the midterm elections less than 24 hours away, some of the Democratic Party’s top digital advertising evangelists are worried that liberal candidates have squandered opportunities by siloing digital media and failing to adequately spend online. Conservative groups account for seven of the ten highest-spending political advertisers on Google and Facebook, according to data collected […]
Online spending records have shattered across the country during this year’s midterm election cycle, but no campaign has brought more attention to digital media than that of Democrat Beto O’Rourke, a Texas congressman running for Republican Ted Cruz’s Senate seat. No candidate this year has raised more money online or spent more on Google, Facebook […]
It is “inevitable” that nation-states will try to leverage Facebook and its ad platform to influence elections and political sentiment again as they did during the 2016 presidential election, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s director of cybersecurity policy. Yet, despite the persistence of false news and misinformation on the platform and likely efforts by bad actors […]
Facebook introduced its political advertising archive and updated transparency policies to the US on Thursday after testing them in other countries, including Canada, Britain and Kenya. Moving forward, all electoral and issue-based ads on Facebook or Instagram will be archived and will have a “paid for by” disclaimer, which prevents political advertisers from promoting content […]
Facebook on Friday implemented new transparency and verification processes for political advertisers. Last October, the company said it would begin allowing only authorized advertisers to run electoral ads, which explicitly advocate for or against an active political candidate. But those limits will now apply to any advertisers who want to run “issue ads” that more […]
During the 2016 US presidential election, news publishers experienced an uptick in engagement. The Trump era has kept that engine going. Politico is no exception, where traffic is up more than 30% year over year. That’s one of the reasons why Politico overhauled its website on Tuesday, showing more stories above the fold and optimizing […]
Cambridge Analytica was notorious long before its controversial use of Facebook data became news. But even before it defected from Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign to Donald Trump’s in 2016, the company was angling for marketing dollars. In September of that year, it had about 25 Fortune 500 businesses in its funnel, AdExchanger was told at […]
When Facebook, Twitter and Google executives were summoned late last year to testify before Congress on political interference and advertising in the 2016 election, they were steadfast that they could manage the issue through ad policies and disclosures. Early bipartisan calls for legislation have mostly faded and, for now, self-regulation is the name of the […]
After Democrats won an unexpected cascade of seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday, liberal technologists and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are hoping to scale the programs behind those successful bids to other state races in 2018. Many of the data and technology products used by candidates in Virginia were backed by […]
A year ago, the Democratic Party data-driven ecosystem, a network of consultants, liberal digital media agencies and campaign tech vendors, was confident it would hold the White House, flip the Supreme Court and maybe even reclaim a Senate majority. Now, there is a sense of urgency as Democrats up and down ballots seek to reclaim […]
While political news drives traffic and engagement, many DC-focused publishers are taking a hit as ad budgets fail to materialize. “There’s a real seasonal cycle for political advertising,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics and public affairs lead at the ad targeting firm Audience Partners. “But the legislative calendar is so messed up, it’s not leaving time for […]
Since the 2016 election, liberal organizations like the ACLU, Center for American Progress (CAP) and Planned Parenthood have been sprinting like they’re on hot coals, smashing online donation precedents, flooding congressional phone lines and marshaling nationwide protests. But does that energy translate into gains for the Democratic Party’s data and digital media ecosystem? During a national […]
In the months leading up to and following the US presidential election, publishers with right-wing and occasionally extremist views, such as Breitbart and InfoWars, have joined stalwarts like the Drudge Report and Newsmax on the Republican right. In spite of their growing audiences, monetization can be tough for these challengers. Some brands have stayed away, […]
In the years leading up to the 2016 election, Democrats continued investing heavily in a shared data and technology platform, NGP VAN, across liberal candidates and causes. Republicans took a more market-based approach, with high-headcount, full-service shops meant to continue product development beyond election years. Republicans wanted competition where liberals emphasized collaboration. In the wake […]
In a bizarre, unruly year for political advertising, an analysis of 2016 campaign, party and super PAC spending does reveal one consistent theme: the rise of targetable media. “It turned the page on what will happen in political spending moving forward, because targeted marketing absolutely replaced mass media,” said Kip Cassino, the executive VP of […]
For YouTube, the recent election cycle was the best of times and the worst of times. Multiple campaign sources think the Google-owned video network remained the single largest platform for political video dollars (aside from TV networks), despite Facebook’s meteoric rise. “YouTube is the second most trafficked site in the US, so it played a […]
Ad tech companies flocked to Washington, DC, during the recent election cycle in pursuit of political ad budgets, but many were disappointed. Rocket Fuel was the most aggressive newcomer, adding approximately 15 people to its DC office for political business development beginning last summer. But the company dismissed most of those hires in the week […]
As many have pointed out, Donald Trump won the presidency while spending a fraction of what Hillary Clinton did on ads and technology. But his campaign had a more concrete paid media strategy than some may have realized. The Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica on polling, digital media and data. The company’s head of […]
It’s illegal to display political ads or messages, solicit supporters, hand out campaign paraphernalia or try to affect voters’ preferences in almost any way once they’re within a roughly 100-foot radius of a polling location. But sophisticated location-based mobile advertising has exposed a loophole in those laws, wherein campaigns target mobile ads to people while […]
Democrat Karen Jacobs isn’t running any TV ads while campaigning for a state House seat in Texas. Even cheaper regional and local broadcast inventory is expensive because her squiggly district northeast of Dallas – known as one of the nation’s most gerrymandered – must hit multiple markets. The district skews heavily Republican so any TV spending would […]
Digital ad experts are rising in the political campaign world, but digital’s unique measurement capabilities aren’t coming with them. A big part of the problem is that the nature of voting defies measurement. “On the political side, there’s only one interaction a person takes [i.e., his or her vote], and you don’t know for months […]
Is it the politics, or are gold-plated faucets not as desirable as they used to be? While Trump’s brand and marketability have boosted his presidential run, a collection of data points – including geolocation data tracking foot traffic to his hotel establishments – suggests the campaign has hurt his business. His companies have experienced some […]
As the primary period comes to a close, Republican uncertainty – not just for presidential candidates, but in races up and down the ballot – remains a prevailing force in political advertising. “What’s still not clear, and it has actually become a little more confusing, is the question of how much Trump will spend,” said […]
Data figured centrally in Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign operations. Hillary Clinton is running a similar playbook. Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz both leaned heavily on technology-enabled voter analysis. But Donald Trump isn’t interested in the data-gathering infrastructure many see as a necessary piece of modern presidential campaigning. “I’ve always felt it was overrated,” […]
