It is no secret that advertising on social media is driven by data, and that the personal information trail that users leave behind is mined in order to target them with ads. Political strategists are now also tapping into this approach to “sell” candidates, and they’re willing to invest a significant amount of money to turn those messages into votes.
Those first flakes of snow remind you that your snow tires are getting a bit old, so you go online looking for the best deal. Suddenly, ads for snow tires start popping up on your Facebook feed or on Twitter and other social media sites. Now, the same data mining used to try to sell you studded tires is also being used by political campaigns. Just search online for the hotly contested race in the second congressional district and watch as numerous ads pop up.
James Cook, a sociology professor at the University of Maine at Augusta who has studied how political campaigns use social media, says that social media allows campaigns to target voters far more narrowly than they could through traditional radio and television ads.
“The Facebook ads, for instance, allow you to target, not just by demographics or gender or age, but also by the kind of job you have, what interests you have, who your friends are, where you traveled, what recent life events you had, like a death in the family that you had.”
Cook says just about every click or comment can be mined by data companies to fashion a strategy aimed at getting your vote, and he says those data can be mined and used, whether you volunteered it or not.
“Predictive analytics is a future in politics that, for better or worse, is here to stay,” he says.
Other social media experts, however, say that it is nearly impossible for campaign media buyers to determine which social platform is best to reach a particular voter.
Judith Rosenbaum, a communications professor at the University of Maine says there are some general guidelines to follow.
For example, to reach young voters, “they’re on Instagram, they’re on Snapchat, they’re on Twitter to some degree. They are not so much on Facebook,” she says. “They are not so much on websites. If you are trying to reach middle aged, college educated people, they tend to be on Twitter.”
Rosenbaum says that while many politicians may not think of themselves as brands, that’s how they are treated by social media platforms. She says research shows that if someone “likes” a brand on Facebook, that tends to influence the people they have identified as “friends” to at least look at that brand. It’s the same for politicians.
“They engage in all of these activities with the idea that that will get people to like the brand. The brand in this case is the politician,” she says.
While federal law requires broadcast political ads to disclose, to some degree, who paid for it, social media buys are not subject to the same rules. So, in some cases, the public won’t know how much has been spent on them until after the elections.
Most social media expenditures by campaign committees have been relatively small, a mere fraction of what’s spent on traditional TV, radio and direct mail campaigns. But some candidates, including independent Senator Angus King, are embracing a much more serious investment in social media messaging.
“I was in Togus, and a guy came up and said ‘I really like your short ads on Youtube.’” says King. “We’ve got six second ads where you go to Youtube and just a little short statement comes up, and this guy loves it.”
In an effort to secure a second six-year term in Washington, King is spending over a $250,000 on social media advertising in the closing weeks of the campaign.
Originally published 4:41 p.m. Oct. 26
