In the two years since Barack Obama used targeted digital advertising to help secure his reelection, companies have been scrambling to make that powerful tool widely accessible.
The challenge has been scaling down the technology so it’s affordable and intuitive enough to service everyone from a Congressional incumbent to a school board challenger. Meanwhile, companies have been working to convince candidates that banner ads and pre-roll videos can be as affective — and potentially more efficient — than the direct mail and TV commercials they’ve relied on to woo voters for decades.
With the midterm election closing in, it appears the digital push is spreading to races at all levels and across the political spectrum.
"There will be more digital advertising served to voters this election cycle in California than in the history of the Internet," said Jim Walsh, founder of DSPolitical.
DSPolitical is a pioneer in helping Democrats target voters through digital advertising, having helped several candidates win big-budget races in 2012. Now the Washington, D.C. firm has partnered with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee to release a self-serve digital advertising platform aimed at giving local party candidates and causes a last-minute advantage at the polls.
Using DLCCads.com, candidates can upload a banner or video ad they’ve created, or they can plug a photo and text into the site’s template to build one. They can then choose where their ads will run and the types of voters they’d like to reach. Once payment is received, the ads will appear on voters’ computers within 24 hours.
Targeted Victory, founded by the digital director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, offers a similar platform for GOP candidates. And new digital advertising networks are emerging at a rapid pace, with many serving one political party while others work with both camps.
The concept is catching on, Walsh argues, because candidates are realizing that targeted digital advertising lets them run smarter and cheaper campaigns.
A candidate might spend $50 for every person potentially reached through a TV ad, for example. However, Walsh points out that might include people who are under 18 or hardcore party loyalists who can’t be swayed.
"It’s literally throwing money down the well," Walsh said.
With digital ads, Walsh said candidates might spend one or two cents per potential voter reached. Those impressions are also targeted, sent only to people that fit desired demographics. And candidates can get real-time feedback, seeing how long voters lingered on a video ad before clicking away.
The system is based on one the business world has been using for years. When Walsh founded DSPolitical shortly after Democrats’ disappointing 2010 election, he looked at the way companies were matching offline files of potential customers against browser cookies — records of their online activity — to target advertising. That’s why an Expedia banner ad might appear at the top of LATimes.com after you’ve been hunting for cheap plane tickets online.
"I said, ‘Wait a second, this is perfect for politics,’" Walsh recalled. "We literally could reach over 90 percent of the U.S. Internet."
Catalist, Democrats’ primary voter database, sold Walsh access to 150 million registered voter profiles. A third party was brought on to anonymize the data before matching it against some 600 million browser cookies DSPolitical had purchased, so the firm can learn details like the gender and political bent of voters but not their names and addresses. Campaigns can then target desired voters based on their online behavior, sending ads for, say, an environmental proposition only to women over age 55 who had signed on to support the Sierra Club.
Companies are starting to offer similar packages that target voters through ads sent to their mobile devices.
"There is nothing more powerful in my mind than being able to serve up ads as voters are walking into the voter booth, where they only thing they’re carrying is probably their phone," Walsh said.
As the technology evolves, Walsh expects candidates will shift more and more money to digital advertising. While candidates were spending just 1 percent of their budgets on digital outlets in 2007, he predicts they’ll be dedicating 15 or 20 percent come 2016.
