'Memes' the Word for Today's Political Donors

Donors to political campaigns and causes are being drawn to a new strategy for political influence: viral digital. In addition to funding TV ads and PACs, The New York Times reports that deep-pocket donors are now bankrolling partisan organizations that specialize in creating catchy, shareable memes, messages and videos, especially on social media platforms. Outfits ranging from Occupy Democrats to the alt-right Milo Inc. are gathering donors who hope that their streams of aggregated links, captioned images and short videos will garner funds, votes and real-world action. While operatives across the political spectrum are being attracted now, the bandwagon got rolling with the Trump campaign's success with Twitter and other social platforms, to the point where a study found that nearly two-thirds of the most popular election tweets were either anti-Clinton or pro-Trump. The Times story cites many new participants from the left/progressive side of the aisle today, including David Brock, a well-known Democratic operative, who started an effort last year to raise $40 million to support Shareblue, a left-wing viral news outfit to rival alt-right publisher Breitbart. And there's John Sellers, a left-wing organizer and former Greenpeace activist, who started a Facebook page called The Other 98% to promote environmentalism and other progressive causes, which now boasts 5 million followers and funding of its nonprofit affiliate by donors such as billionaire George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations. The low cost for potentially high impact is especially attractive to causes and donors. Per the Times, Stand Up America, a progressive group run by Sean Eldridge, husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, reaches, on average, 10 million people weekly by only spending "in the low six figures" to produce a Facebook page of shareable graphics and news. For more detail, read the full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/business/media/political-donors-put-their-money-where-the-memes-are.html

Political Campaigns Face Social Media Changes

Social media strategy is essential for the success of political campaigns and causes today. As the Pew Research Center reports, a majority of Americans now say they get news via social media, and half of the public turned to social media sites to learn about the 2016 presidential election. Social success in 2016 doesn't mean campaigns can rest on their laurels, however. A Digital Information World post by Anthony Bergs--including a handy infographic from CJG Marketing--cites a list of social media changes and trends that political marketers should include in 2017 strategies. For example, improved social targeting got a lot of buzz in 2016, with campaigns embracing the effectiveness of Facebook's “Lookalike” audiences. But in 2017, machine learning, artificial intelligence and access to increasing amounts of data--from demographics and behavior all the way to forecasting of intent-- will support even more precise ad targeting, provided campaigns make the investment in audience data and analytics. The response-getting power of digital video is well-proven, so it's no shock that 48% of marketers are planning to add YouTube videos in 2017.  Campaigns and causes would be wise to also invest in an internal or external video content development team and live streaming,  now available on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter's Periscope, YouTube and Snapchat. Next to video at the top of social marketing agendas this year is "influencer marketing," with 84% of marketers planning at least one social media influencer campaign to find and leverage sources of followers and engagement. One reason for the influencer search is that the ability to generate free organic traffic via social media is waning thanks to social platform algorithms favoring paid ads and squeezing out organic content. With Facebook and Twitter offering just 2% to 4% organic reach for posts in 2016 (and falling), most political budgets need to include paid social ads. But here's good news: Chatbot technology is on the horizon and promises to handle a mass volume of user conversations one-on-one with customized content; Facebook's current Messenger bot is a harbinger of more to come. For more social media trends, check out the article and infographic at http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2017/01/infographic-social-media-marketing-trends.html

Targeted Digital, TV Ads Mark Political Milestones

In 2016, major political campaigns that don't embrace targeted, programmatic digital and media advertising are simply on the wrong side of history, implies a recent Adweek article. The article presents an evolution of political advertising compiled by Videology, a digital video ad platform that works with political campaigns on both sides of the aisle. There's a handy infographic that starts back before the Founding Fathers promoted revolution and shows how technology is speeding up and raising the stakes. You can see that the first meetings of Massachusetts town halls in 1633 have been replaced by Facebook town halls with national reach. James Polk unveiled a durable political tool, the first campaign slogan, back in 1844, but 2016 campaigns that want to leverage a rallying cry turn it into a hash tag for millions of Twitter followers. And since presidential contenders George W. Bush and John Kerry invited voters to their dueling websites in 2004 nomination speeches, and President Barack Obama inaugurated a social media strategy to woo younger voters in 2008, political digital advertising has exploded. In fact, spending on political digital advertising is expected to top $1 billion for the first time in 2016. More than half the digital ad budget will be used to target social media sites this year, the infographic reveals. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower launched the first TV political ads, and now, per Borrell Associates, the bulk of the projected $11.7 billion spent for political ads in the 2016 election cycle will go to local broadcast television at $5.9 billion. That's a spending record, but the increased use of TV ad targeting technology is what Videology spots as the significant shift; Hillary Clinton's campaign especially now uses addressable TV advertising to target TV ads to specific households based on demographics and set-top boxes. Adweek quotes Videology's Mark McKee, SVP of North America: "This idea of more addressable ways of which to connect consumers is something that, hands down, everyone is talking to us about. It's not about these mass market pushes that they're thinking about and strategizing most of their time. It's much more about 'Where are the places that we need to make the biggest difference with a very targeted message?'" For the article and infographic, go to http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/infographic-town-halls-targeting-political-advertising-has-come-long-way-172283

How Presidential Hopefuls Score on Social Media

Social media has been making political news in 2016, from Donald Trump's controversial tweets to Bernie Sanders' millennial "like"-ability. So how do all the presidential hopefuls compare in terms of their social media ground game? In a recent Fortune magazine article, the analytics team of Hootsuite social media management rated the candidates on five key categories of social performance: impact, engagement, reach. sentiment, and authenticity. It should be no surprise that GOP front-runner Donald Trump comes out on top, using social media as part of a three-pronged strategy of interdependent, mutually reinforcing use of rallies, media coverage and social buzz. On the theory that any type of attention is better than no attention, Trump wins with impact, reach and authenticity, even though he is weaker than other candidates on engagement and sentiment (more negative social mentions). Close on Trump's heels is Democrat challenger Bernie Sanders, who succeeds with strong engagement, impact and authenticity, despite lack of a planned strategy. Bernie's young followers have created a collective social energy for him that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton can envy. Nevertheless, Democratic leader Clinton comes in third overall thanks to her huge reach (second only to Trump); she has 3.1 million Twitter followers, 3.1 million Facebook likes, successful use of Instagram and early embrace of Snapchat. She also scores higher on positive sentiment. Meanwhile, Republican Ted Cruz trails in fourth place with weak reach and tepid sentiment inspiration; Cruz counts just 3.2 million followers on Twitter and Facebook compared with Trump’s 14.5 million, for example. And John Kasich is dead last, in delegates and social power, with just 292,000 followers on Twitter and 286,000 likes on Facebook. For the detailed analysis, read http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-social-media/

Political Digital: Why Google, Facebook, Twitter Rule

Political campaigns are forecast to spend over $1 billion on digital advertising this election cycle, and they have more online, social and mobile options than ever before. But so far, just three platforms are set to claim most of the political digital ad spend--Google, Facebook and Twitter--reports AdExchanger, a digital marketing trade publication. Political campaigns tend to end up with Google or Facebook even if they buy via a political ad network or independent media/technology seller, the report notes. One reason is that political ad buying involves long-term planning and reserved buys of short duration, which is very different from the iterative testing and optimization that independent agencies are used to handling for brand advertisers. The leading digital platforms also have benefited this election from the disruptive impact of "earned media," the free coverage that GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump used in trouncing the Rubio and Bush campaigns despite their big paid-media spends. Paid-media effectiveness doubts have sent political operatives looking for safe bets--and that benefits proven digital media incumbents. The Digital Big 3 have further honed their edge by aggressively hiring political insiders with Democratic or Republican connections in building their account teams. The AdExchanger article cites recent VP of policy hires such as a GOP congresswoman for Google, a George W. Bush aide for Facebook, and a senior Democratic aide for Twitter. Plus, Facebook and Google have developed new tools specifically tailored to politicos. Facebook offers targeting of "political influencers" who actively consume and share political news on the platform, and, new for 2016, voter file matching. Meanwhile, Google has introduced a beta tool just for presidential candidates, Posts, which gives them some control over which content is displayed in a search of their name. For more, read http://adexchanger.com/politics/three-big-web-companies-are-dominating-political-ad-budgets/

Voters Unite in Interest, Differ on News Sources

This presidential election cycle has grabbed the public's attention, whether via TV or social media, in an unprecedented way. The most recent Pew Research Center survey finds that 91% of Americans have already tuned into election information--a higher level of learning about presidential candidates than at the same point in the past two presidential elections. Yet, while united in overall interest, the electorate differs widely on which media are the most helpful sources of information, with no one source gaining more than a quarter of adult favor-- so campaigns definitely can't put all their eggs in one media basket. Overall, voters rate cable TV news as the most helpful (24%), followed by social media (14%) and local TV (14%). At the bottom (1%) is candidate or campaign digital outreach via website/app/e-mail. Unsurprisingly, preferences are affected by age, education level and political party, Pew reports. Cable television is most popular with those 65 and older and Republicans, while soical media is the favorite information source of 18- to 29-year-olds. Just as important for campaign planners is the fact that the majority of voters learn about the presidential election from multiple sources ( 45% from five or more and 35% from three or four), compared with only 9% who get information from just one source. TV still tops the media mix, with 78% of Americans saying they learned about the presidential reace from at least one of the four TV-based sources (cable news, local news, national network news, late-night comedy). Another 65% list a digital platform as one of their information sources (news website, social site, issue-based site/app/e-mail or campaign group site/app/e-mail). Print newspapers are at the bottom of the information heap (cited by 36%). And before investing in a broad social media push, campaigns also should note that Facebook far outranks other sites as a political source (37% of the public). In contrast, Trump's go-to Twitter is sourced by just 9%. For more detail, read http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hard-to-miss/

Prep for Social Media Crowding in 2016 Election

Social media marketing has become an essential part of political candidate and cause campaigning in the 2016 election, building on the proven success of platforms such as Facebook in 2014 and the improved targeting available this time around. The problem is that everyone has the same idea, and the big-money PACs are shifting premium dollars to grab social attention, warns Mitch Dunn, senior vice president of Empower MediaMarketing, in an AdExchanger.com Politics post. This will create two new problems for social marketers, political and commercial, especially on the popular Facebook platform. Due to Facebook’s strict limit on news feed ad frequency, if more campaigns continue to use Facebook, there can be crowding out of marketers, notes Dunn. Since individual ads can only appear on Facebook twice a day, more total ads can limit an individual ad space in the news feed. The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) also can be more unpredictable and expensive. Since political campaigns often use microtargeting to focus on extremely small segments of the population, any campaign targeting similar segments on Facebook may notice higher CPMs than normal. More than in the past, political campaigns need anticipate social strategy issues and costs. Solutions include adjusting timing to avoid conflict with other higher-spending campaigns targeting the same niche, testing new target niches, and expanding ad spend to other targetable social media platforms courting political action, such as Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube, etc. For more: http://adexchanger.com/politics/the-2016-election-will-disrupt-marketers-social-strategies/

Campaigns Must Arm to Win the 2016 Digital Race

Campaigns and causes will be competing on a digital battlefield as never before in the 2016 elections. A recent MediaPost.com article by Mike Werch, marketing manager of SocialCode, offered eight key digital strategies to boost message impact, expand voter base and capture donations. Werch advises: 1) target unaffiliated voters by serving digital ads to lookalikes, people with the same interests and behaviors as those in the voter, donor or e-mail subscriber files; 2) recapture donors with digital remarketing (use of Website Custom Audiences) to target people who visit a donation page but fail to donate; 3) apply digital insights across channels, using the creative test results of digital video to hone TV or print ads, for example; 4) improve primary audience response with digital geo-targeting, testing geo-targeted digital video to perfect expensive local TV ads, for example; 5) segment audiences for more digital leverage, using Facebook's rich user data, for example, to deploy ads relevant to targets' demographics, behaviors and interests; 6) do a local-interest digital campaign in an area before hitting the pavement, and follow up with conversion-focused ads to build mailing lists; 7) do digital "get out the vote" campaigning, messaging politically inactive Facebook users who also match political affinity targeting as an example; 8) test 2016's new and improved ad options for political campaigning, such as Facebook's lead ads for mobile sign-ups and conversions with pre-filled forms. For more detail, read http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/264971/how-2016-presidential-candidates-can-win-the-digit.html

Marketing Pro Ranks GOP Hopefuls' Social Efforts

Social media branding is a must-have for today's presidential hopefuls, so how are the leading GOP contenders doing from a purely marketing standpoint? A recent MarketingProfs article by Jeremy Page, a network marketing blogger, provides one political outsider's ranking of the top six Republican presidential candidates based just on social media marketing performance. You may not agree with the rankings, but there are lessons worth gleaning. For example, Page puts Jeb Bush at the tail end of GOP contenders based on a lackluster social media presence (just 363,000 Twitter followers) and policy-oriented posts that create a persona without emotional resonance. Social media, especially Twitter, "isn't the place to be overly sensible and pragmatic," warns Page. Marco Rubio comes in fifth place with his strategy of keeping an uncontentious, low profile while building a social following (over 1 million Twitter followers). Page urges Rubio to do more to reinforce his brand as a "candidate of the people" with retweets and posts that leverage "your community for your social media content." Fourth place is awarded to long-shot Carly Fiorina for using social media to push a persona of openness, showcasing her willingness to answer questions via Q&As on niche, real-time streaming platforms like Periscope, for example. Ted Cruz gets a No. 3 position for an innovative digital strategy that stresses crowdfunding and gamification. Via Cruz Crowd, followers can recruit friends to join a personal Cruz Crowd donation page and then monitor money raised via Facebook and Twitter, plus earn game badges. With the competitive Cruz Crew app, players earn points based on actions to spread the word. Ben Carson is No. 2 thanks to his use of Facebook to leverage 4.6 million fans (compared with Hillary Clinton's 1.5 million and Trump's 3.8 million Facebook followers) via heartfelt long-form letters, plus polls and petitions to collect e-mail addresses. At the top of the heap is (no surprise) Donald Trump, who presents his tax plan on Periscope, hosts #AskTrump Q&As, and rallies fans on Facebook and Twitter with unfiltered "real" posts that keep him constantly in the media spotlight (for free). Page's takeaway: "Use social media to be controversial and troll the media." For more, see http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/29033/ranking-gop-presidential-candidates-according-to-digital-strategy

Social Media Still Lacks Political Fundraising Power

Political and nonprofit causes eager to leap into social media fundraising are likely headed for disappointment, according to NPR's All Tech Considered report on digital fundraising. The article cites a new Adobe study showing that, of 43 million visits to about two dozen nonprofit websites, three-quarters of visitors arrived via web search or by directly typing the url. Only 3% followed a social media link. A Red Cross 2014 survey delivered similar bad news for social fundraising: While online solicitation and engagement helped to influence giving, donors said they were more motivated by in-person requests, e-mails and direct mail. Social media is "useful because people are seeing your issue," Michael Ward, a principal at strategy firm M+R that publishes the Benchmark Study, a nonprofit industry guide to online fundraising and advocacy, explained in the NPR story. "But then to actually get them to divert that knowledge into a donation, it really takes other channels, such as e-mail marketing or even direct marketing, to close that loop." One reason social lags in gathering dollars is that when users are scrolling through a social site like Facebook, they are unlikely to click to an outside website, especially one asking for credit card info. However, digital fundraising experts see crowdfunding, based on financial appeals for small sums from friends instead of organizations, as a social approach with promise. In fact, Facebook recently facilitated crowdfunding donations with the rollout of new fundraiser pages, which allow a nonprofit to describe a specific campaign and collect donations directly through Facebook, and to promote the pages via ads and shared posts with donate buttons. Available to select nonprofits for the holidays, fundraiser page signups are set to expand in 2016. For more: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/12/02/458008461/a-click-too-far-why-social-media-isnt-that-great-for-fundraising

Why the Carson Campaign Is a Facebook Fan

GOP hopeful Ben Carson's campaign is a fan of Facebook's political ad platform--to the point that Ken Dawson, Carson's head of digital strategy, calls it "the heart of our campaign" in an October interview with Scott Detrow of NPR's political news. Indeed, Carson's Facebook page has over 4 million followers for its posts, videos and candidate chats, Detrow reports. But Facebook's biggest appeal for Carson and other candidates is its ability to specifically target ads. Campaigns have three basic ad-targeting tools. Campaigns can import a list of existing supporters for ad promotion, for example; Dawson says the Carson team loads e-mail lists garnered from website sign-ups, donations, event attendance and other sources, and then tailors ad frequency, content and call-to-action by segment. To expand targeted ad reach, campaigns can also ask Facebook to build custom "look-alike" audiences, matching the characteristics of existing active donors, for example. Finally, campaigns can use the information provided in Facebook profiles and appended by Facebook's data partner Acxiom to select ad audiences by demographics such as location, age and gender, as well as by behaviors such as pages liked and purchase history. For more: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/26/451271794/like-it-or-not-political-campaigns-are-using-facebook-to-target-you

New Made-for-Digital Content Courts Young Voters

In their efforts to corral younger, millennial voters, 2016 election campaigns are investing in made-for-digital content, with a focus on social media and mobile, at record rates, according to a recent CNBC.com article. Reuters estimates that candidates will spend $1 billion on digital media advertising, close to four times the amount spent in 2012, CNBC reports. Almost six months before the primary elections, 80% of declared presidential hopefuls have created made-for-digital YouTube videos, and eight candidates have used live streaming for their candidacy announcements. Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders even worked with a virtual reality production company to film a fundraising speech so viewers could have a 3-D, 360-degree experience. Candidates clearly want to tap into the 18- to 36-year-old crowd that, per the Crowdtap marketing platform, spends 17.8 hours a day consuming media content, especially through social sites. It is also a voter group that is so mobile-phone-addicted that YouTube on mobile now reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any single cable network. When it comes to content delivery, Facebook is aggressively courting politicians with updated ad products that allow matching of voter files with Facebook profile data, and Snapchat is curating live candidate events and offering candidates their own Snapchat channels. However, in embracing made-for-digital video, candidates are taking a new approach from the slick TV-style productions of the past. Campaigns are trying to connect to a new generation of voters with raw, live and hopefully viral content (Sen. Ted Cruz frying bacon on the barrel of a gun). A quote from Sen. Rand Paul's chief digital strategist, Vincent Harris, sums up: "2016 is potentially the first cycle that, by Election Day, voters will be consuming more content from the Internet than on television. This is especially true for first-time voters, younger voters and college voters..." For more, read http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/05/how-pols-are-targeting-the-youth-vote-go-360-and-snapchat-like-mad.html

In Targeted Donor Race, E-mail Still Beats Social

With political campaigns and causes expected to spend up to $1 billion on digital efforts for the 2016 races, npr.org's James Doubek recently discussed the impact on the political marketing landscape. Thanks to social networks, campaigns are now able to enhance static data--voter lists and consumer behavior--with personal "engagement" data. To explain the advantage, Doubek quotes Will Conway, lead organizer at NationalBuilder, a political digital platform provider: "If this person subscribes to Field & Stream and he drives a Ford F-150, there's a high percentage chance that he's a veteran. Well, if in his Twitter bio he says he's a veteran, you know he's a veteran." So it's no wonder 2016 campaigns are spending on hyper-targeted Facebook and Twitter promotion (plus Snapchat, YouTube and more) to influence voters. But when it comes to raising money, e-mail is still the "king." "Nothing comes close" to an e-mail list, Michael Beach, co-founder of Targeted Victory, a Republican digital campaign firm, explains to Doubek, adding, "Our campaigns will do 70%-plus of their fundraising through e-mail." Back in 2012, Obama gathered 90% of his online donations from e-mails. And this time around, the e-mail list targeting is likely to be more refined and efficient. For example, Hillary Clinton's team has a 5 million-person e-mail list, but the average e-mail blast only goes to 780,000, because e-mail messages are tailored by factors such as interests and likelihood of donating. Read the complete news story: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/28/426022093/as-political-campaigns-go-digital-and-social-email-is-still-king

Facebook Emerging As 2016 Digital Ad Heavyweight

Facebook is being declared "the single most important tool of the digital campaign" in 2016 by a recent National Journal magazine article. The National Journal reports that 2016 presidential contenders as disparate as Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson, Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders are already investing in the social network. And the reasons for Facebook's expanded clout, beyond its 190 million American users, are new features unveiled since the 2012 presidential campaign, including more customized and sophisticated splicing of the American electorate and the ability to serve video to those thinly targeted sets of people. That means "the emotional impact of television delivered at an almost atomized, individual level," as the article points out. Facebook not only has a wealth of information about its members--identity, age, gender, location, passions--its new partnerships with big data firms, like Acxiom, allow it to layer on behavioral information, such as shopping habits. Political operatives are already modeling the universes of likely Iowa caucus-goers and potential New Hampshire primary voters and uploading those models into Facebook to match them with Facebook profiles of actual voters in those states, per the article. "We are guaranteeing you will reach the right person at the right time and eliminate the waste that you might find in e-mail marketing, certainly in TV advertising," Eric Laurence, who is in charge of political advertising on Facebook told the National Journal. Cost factors are definitely driving Facebook interest. Vincent Harris, Paul's chief digital strategist, is quoted: "It's so cheap. I am getting Facebook video views for one cent a view—one cent a view! ... It's a fundraising tool, it's a persuasion tool, and it's a [get-out-the-vote] tool. It's a way to organize, too." And there's an attractive ROI potential, too. Facebook likes to point out that the 2013 campaign of Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor recovered 58% of its Facebook acquisition costs by linking new e-mail subscribers to online contribution forms. For more, read http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/facebook-the-vote-20150612

Want to Tap Millennial Politics? Go to Facebook

If they want to get on the Millennial generation's political radar, campaigns need to go to Facebook. A recent Mashable article cites the evidence of social media's grip on Millennial politics with the latest Pew Research Center study, which found that 61% of Millennials, those born between 1981 to 1996, said they get political news from Facebook at least once a week. That social media preference easily outpaced the 37% of political input from local TV, the preferred medium of Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 to 1964. In fact, Millennials and Baby Boomers are mirror opposites in terms of preferred political news sources, with Boomers getting 60% of their political news from local TV and only 39% from Facebook. The study, in which Pew surveyed 3,000 people, also found that the Millennial age cohort tends to recognize fewer news outlets, with less awareness of half of the 36 sources that Pew asked about when compared to the Boomers and Generation X group (those born between 1965 and 1980). The report also polled Millennials on how much they trust different news outlets. Among the most recognized and trusted, CNN led (trusted by 60%, distrusted by 16%, with 19% in the middle). Next in trust were the news divisions of ABC, NBC, and CBS. Lowest trust went to digital sources like BuzzFeed and conservative media like the Rush Limbaugh Show. Among the top social media players, Facebook outdistanced Twitter, with just 14% of Millennials saying they got political news via tweets. For more, read http://mashable.com/2015/06/01/millennials-facebook-politics-pew/

GOP Hopefuls Face Online Ad Space Sell-outs

Even before all the Republican presidential hopefuls can enter the 2016 race, the hottest online ad inventory is selling out, especially for the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries, reports the National Journal. There were digital-ad shortages ahead of the 2012 and 2014 elections, too, but not so far in advance, note political pros and online sellers like Google. But, with the summer of 2015 still ahead, winter 2016 ad inventory is booking up in this presidential race. The ads that are selling out the fastest are those that automatically play on Hulu, YouTube and other Internet-based videos that users can't skip. With a field of nearly 20 GOP candidates, and super PAC money, the ad crunch is not surprising, and Peter Pasi, now vice president of political sales at Collective and a former GOP digital ad strategist, predicts "a huge shortfall." The ad space that will be available for late arrivals includes Facebook, which sells video ads at auction, so campaigns can't lock them up in advance, and YouTube's skippable ads, which are also sold at auction. But political strategists advise conservative campaigns to grab prime ad real estate early, especially since there is little penalty for pre-buying; most ad reservations can be cancelled later at no cost or for a small fee. Perhaps just as important, campaigns are urged to use more sophisticated data targeting than in the past to make the most of scarce ad inventory, avoiding wasted dollars by serving ads only to likely caucus-goers or primary voters. "It's BYOD--bring your own data--if you will," remarks Kenny Day, head of political-advocacy sales for Yahoo. For the full story, read http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/websites-are-already-selling-out-of-ad-inventory-for-2016-20150512

Can Facebook Kick Up 2016 Political Donations?

Will Facebook become a more significant ingredient in the political fundraising mix of 2016 candidates and causes? Consider mid-term election research conducted by Facebook, as reported in a recent medipost.com article. Facebook tracked the Senate campaigns of Democrats Michelle Nunn of Georgia and Mark Udall of Colorado. OK, so the candidates lost, but their Facebook ads won in terms of donor power. Facebook found that not only did Facebook ads provide at least a 200% ROI but people who saw the ads gave more on average than those who did not. Specifically, people who viewed Udall's Facebook ad gave $47.87 on average, while those who did not see the ad gave an average $42.70. There are good reasons Facebook will be an attractive fundraising addition in 2016, argues a recent mediapost.com article by Shawn Kemp, co-founder of ActionSprout, which helps nonprofits optimize Facebook. Facebook has the deepest social reach: 42% of Americans have a Facebook account, compared with 19% on Twitter, the second-largest social network. Facebook offers attractive targeting options such as geo-targeting and look-alike audiences. And Facebook ads, while not a key donation driver alone, can have a multiplier effect in multi-channel efforts, as shown by Facebook's mid-term election experiments. So, for example, combining Facebook ads with an e-mail campaign to the same targeted list could boost giving per donor. For more, see http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/248996/facebook-advertising-matters-for-political-fundrai.html#

Digital Tool Aids Low-Dollar Campaigns on Right

For just $500, a local, small-budget campaign can now use targeted digital marketing, once a campaign weapon wielded only by big-budget political rivals. Targeted Victory, the digital political marketing firm that recently helped Greg Abbott become the new Texas governor, has joined with Facebook Ads to create the Targeted Engagement platform, and is making it available to any campaign with $500 and a right-leaning agenda, reports Direct Marketing News. The new platform combines internal and external data on likely Republican voters and donors, and then uses modeling to optimize media mixes. The minimum cost is $500, although campaigns will probably need to spend more like $10,000 to really leverage the power of the platform, per Targeted Victory co-founder Michael Beach. Beach explained to DM News, "With a lot of our senatorial candidates last year, we found that we could reach 75% of target audiences on Facebook. This is a powerful tool, because it allows you to compete with smaller resources. On TV, they're missing about 30% of possible voters." The Targeted Engagement SaaS platform targets across desktop, mobile and TV, while its Facebook upgrade adds the ability to post images, links and videos with no minimum buy. See the DM News report at http://www.dmnews.com/getting-elected-just-got-cheaper/article/399071/

Can Campaigns Tap Instagram's Growing Clout?

Social media's political strategy has been so dominated by Facebook and Twitter that campaign marketers may have missed the swift rise of another social platform: Instagram. Thanks to a post by Aaron Blake on The Fix blog of The Washington Post for pointing out the growing political potential of Instagram. While Facebook still corrals the most Internet users, Instagram's photo-sharing service has now surpassed Twitter in terms of total users, per the Pew Research Center's 2014 data. More significantly, Pew found that Instagram's demographics skew strongly toward younger voters (53% of 18- to 29-year old Internet users), minorities (38% of African-Americans and 34% of Latinos, compared with 21% of white Internet users) and women (more women use Instagram than men). Those are the groups that made up the supposed "Obama coalition," and both Democrats and Republicans are courting them for a 2016 win. So no one should be surprised that, in his recent State of the Union address, President Obama concluded his praise for astronaut Scott Kelly's yearlong stay in space to prep for a Mars mission by telling Kelly, "Make sure to Instagram it." Campaign marketers may want to take the hint and start planning how to reach Instagram's key voting blocs by sharing some persuasive images. For details of Pew's social media data, read http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/04/why-the-two-parties-need-to-figure-out-instagram-now/

Will Voters 'Like' New Facebook Political Videos?

Political campaigns expanded use of video ads on Facebook and other social platforms in 2014. But if campaigns like Facebook video, they'll have to make changes to get voters to "like" them back in 2016, according to a recent article by Derek Willis for The Upshot website of The New York Times. Previously, many political videos were just re-purposed TV ads, either run on the candidate's Facebook page or as a "pre-roll" clip before another YouTube video that users actually wanted to watch. For political video ads to really leverage social media impact, they will need to be in the "feed" as ads, and grabbing attention in just a few seconds. That means 2016 campaign videos will have to be designed specifically for the Internet rather than TV, digital ad consultants predict. Plus, while social media has a great potential audience, data shows that politically active Facebook users rarely cross party lines and mainly share with like-minded followers. So tapping the wider reach of a social network like Facebook also will mean producing more distinct online videos customized to specific audiences. "Campaigns will need to produce vast quantities of customized messaging," Connor Walsh, a Republican digital consultant, told Willis. "And with a cap on the frequency a user is shown the same ad, campaigns cannot rely on repetition to drive home their message." Instead of repetition, video content will be challenged to use a few seconds of title and image for an immediate hook that inspires engagement and sharing. Yet while grabbing viewer attention, social video content will have to straddle the line between serious policy and the over-the-top "red meat" that can backfire, especially outside the base, warn digital media experts. Clearly, winning over social networks with political videos will not be an easy task. For the whole article, read http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/upshot/coming-to-your-facebook-feed-more-political-videos.html