Move over robocalls and direct mail advertising, campaign cookies are poised to transform political campaign advertising.
“It’s just like door knocking or direct mail, just online,” said Jim Walsh, CEO of DSPolitical, an online ad firm that caters to Democrats. “It’s using old school targeting, it’s just online. That’s the only difference.”
Walsh estimated about 30 percent of commercial advertising has moved online, compared with only about 1 percent of political advertising.
Cookies, amassed every time you log in to your favorite sites or buy something from Amazon, are key to the emerging online political advertising strategies. They are used to store website preferences and help make the Internet more personal.
“We can find about 80 percent [of voters],” said Jordan Lieberman president of CampaignGrid, an online advertising platform used by political campaigns.
Cookies are already being used by other types of advertisers. Many websites that use cookies to make your browsing experience faster and more personalized are collecting that data and selling it to online ad firms.
Political campaigns “take the voter file and cookie match it,” said Lieberman.
A voter file contains information like your name, address, phone number. The cookie contains information like your buying habits and what websites you visit. The combination of the two lists allows for targeted advertising on a new level.
“The personally identifiable information is stripped out and replaced with the cookie. There [are] no names attached to those cookies,” said Lieberman. But with them, campaigns can target, for instance, women ages 40-64 in West Virginia who haven’t voted in the last few elections, and buy ad space on the next website they visit encouraging them to vote.
The ad purchase happens in milliseconds, with the targeted campaign ad showing up in the banner, or as the pre-roll video on YouTube. And if you aren’t the targeted demographic? The website selling ad space will find an advertiser that wants you.
“The ads cascade down,” said Lieberman. “It goes down a list, a toothpaste ad or a car ad. Who wants it?”
With all of this information floating around, privacy is a key issue, but Lieberman is confident that online digital advertising is actually some of the most secure advertising out there.
“The level of privacy that we offer in online advertising is unprecedented,” he said. “What we’ll never generate is a list of people that clicked through the ad. We’re wiping off the personally identifiable information; we don’t know the name of the person.”
While digital microtargeting continues to grow, generic banner ads viewed by all voters are still used, but Walsh thinks they are not efficient.
“The people that see it that aren’t your audience? That’s a waste,” he said.
CampaignGrid isn’t the only company working to entice campaigns with targeted online advertising. Lieberman estimates there are probably 250 people working in the field right now with inevitable growth in the future.
DSPolitical worked on nine Senate campaigns in 2012, including the campaign for Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, who won her North Dakota seat in an upset.
In 2012, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign hired Targeted Victory, a Republican-leaning data group that focuses not only on targeted online advertising, but also fundraising, analytics and design and development.
Campaigns are growing more reliant on data to target and engage voters, but online advertising is still in its infancy. As the technology develops and becomes more and more widespread, the process will become more and more refined.
“It’s still an emerging market,” said Lieberman. “In two or three cycles, there will be a science to it.”
Walsh added this prediction: “You’re going to see exponential use in 2014 and 2016.”
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