“AdExchanger Politics” is a regular column tracking developments in the 2020 political campaign cycle. Today’s column is written by Jordan Lieberman, general manager of political and public affairs at A4. On Sept. 29, 2008, the Dow Jones dropped 777 points and the subprime mortgage crisis caught up with us. The Lehman Brothers crash was two weeks old. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Every year, voter-targeting firms sell audience segments based on trending issues. “We look into our crystal ball and think about what’s going to be big come November,” said Andrew Drechsler, CRO at the liberal data firm HaystaqDNA. And this year, everybody’s crystal ball is showing the same thing: voters who are willing to split or […]
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 […]
While Ted Cruz’s suspended campaign committee endures to manage assets like fundraiser lists and voter profiles, it has no intention of contributing anything but the bare minimum of its valuable data to the RNC and its voter-file vendor, the Data Trust, said sources with knowledge of the Cruz committee’s plans. The Cruz committee is not […]
Political ad dollars, even more so than brand budgets, have conglomerated around a handful of major players. Of the more than $1 billion analysts predict candidates and super PACs will spend online this election, “half will go to Facebook and Google, Pandora – those are the big ones – and Twitter,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics […]
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 […]
The last two presidential elections were decided in part by the Democrats’ superior tech and data infrastructure. While the Republicans have since invested in bolstering their own expertise, the Dems believe they still have the upper hand. “Republicans who see our tools still say our solutions are much better than what they have on their […]
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,” […]
When Reuters reported last month that the Koch brothers’ organization, Freedom Partners, would sit out the remainder of the primary, the reason given was a worry that “spending millions of dollars attacking Trump would be money wasted, since they had not yet seen any attack on Trump stick.” Political insiders now expect a change in […]
Google, Facebook and Twitter have become powerful platforms for political candidates, and each has earned a line item on every campaign’s media plan. But it may require another election cycle before smaller players can break into the big time. In 2015, Borrell Research predicted $1.1 billion would be spent by political buyers on digital media […]
The extreme fragmentation of digital media is tougher on national political campaigns than on brand advertisers. Because political campaigns must fight for every vote (at least once the primaries are done), discrete audiences that a brand marketer might dismiss as too difficult or small are essential to the political advertiser. The 3% of American adults that still connect […]
