techPresident - microtargeting - Comments

Evaluating campaign tactics

ChrisKennedy — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:33:29 -0500

Her $51 Facebook ad buy [$42 actually...] has essentially nothing to do with her vote margin. The logic is: 1) the candidate bought $51 in Facebook ads, 2) the candidate won by 586 votes, 3) therefore the Facebook ads caused the candidate to win. That is not a good argument - it can be applied to every expenditure the candidate made even if it had absolutely no real effect. That's campaign evaluation by anecdote... sadly a common approach. Thought experiment: if she had not bought the Facebook ads, how many votes would she lose?

The more likely reason she won is that she ran as a Democrat against a Republican opponent in 2008, where young voter turnout was particularly high and emphasis was placed on down-ballot races. She also walked door-to-door and talked to voters, a far easier, proven, and uninteresting way to generate 586 votes than hip Facebook ads. And keep in mind: 1) her opponent has never been opposed for the office of county treasurer, 2) New Hampshire has election day registration and high youth turnout in general.

Side note: this is not micro-targeting, it's demo/geo-targeting.

"Well, I didn't want to make anyone cry..."

Gene Koo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:53:08 -0500

True. With awesome power comes awesome responsibility ;).

But the calculator really is heinous.

Targeting is Scary, without permission

shimanepdf — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:27:49 -0400

You knew I would have to comment on today's TP.

Micro targeting, online or off line is creepy, mostly because voters have not GIVEN PERMISSION for this to occur.

I wrote about this in my op-ed in the Washington Post 9/13. Here is the link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR200809...

Here are my blog posts on the hearings in congress this summer. One casualty? The CEO of one of the companies has left and the company, NebuAd, is probably going down.

http://thinkdodone.typepad.com/ccd/2008/09/nebuad-ceo-resi.html

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wonderful article

Freedomfighter — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:21:08 -0400

I think you put it quite aptly. There is a difference in the way the Obama campaign and Moveon converged to grow a movement compared to other attempts to use micro-targeting. They started early and piled it on. When they wanted an event, they sent emails to those most likely to read the email and attend. The result is a bunch of identical minded people showing up, who could be encouraged to donate without any criticism of why they were meeting. That works well, until the people attending realize they were caught up in a form of impulse buying habit and not getting anything out of it.
Micro-targeting has great potential for a true supporter base, but it does have serious drawbacks if there is not a lot offline connection.