Obama's Former Data Team Sells Secret TV Formula

Now that some Obama campaign senior data whizzes have left politics to chase corporate cash cows with the newly formed Analytics Media Group (AMG) ad agency, they are pulling back the curtain on the campaign’s secret, technologically advanced formulas for reaching a target TV audience -- and political marketers will want take a closer look. Check out a recent New York Times article on AMG and the "secret sauce" that revolutionized television-ad buying, where over $400 million, or about 50% of the campaign’s budget, was spent. Previous campaigns made decisions on television-ad budgets based on hunches and deductions about what channels target voters were watching, partly based on broad viewership ratings of Nielsen and survey data, which typically led to buying relatively expensive ads during evening-news and prime-time viewing hours. The 2012 campaign combined its vast voter and social media data with advanced set-top-box monitoring technology to target voters, resulting in a smarter and cheaper — and potentially more invasive — way to beam commercials into homes. For more, see the New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html?pagewanted=all