Get Ready for a Flood of Online Campaign Ads That Will Target and Track You – Mother Jones
The amount of spending on digital advertising is expected to nearly double in this election cycle compared with 2012. Online spots cost a fraction of traditional TV or print ads, and political operatives are giddy over the new-and-improved ways to cheaply and creatively bombard voters with their messages. Larry Grisolano, who oversaw paid advertising efforts for the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns, predicts that the 2016 presidential nominees likely will devote nearly a quarter of their ad-buy budgets to digital media. Considering that each side could spend more than $2 billion to get into the White House, that’s potentially hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for grabbing eyeballs.
Television ads will remain the dominant tool for winning hearts and minds, digital consultants say, but the utility of online outreach is that it can pinpoint and analyze who’s seeing and clicking on what. And campaigns can microtarget potential supporters with more precision than ever before. “Everyone is spending money on Facebook,” Grisolano notes. “They give you all kinds of ways to target advertisements. If, say, I want to advertise to people who show an interest in something specific, like people who are looking to buy a Volvo, I can do that.”
Curmudgeon at Work 