The Newest Campaign Technologies

I’m still making the rounds at the Politics Online Conference and wanted to share some of the newest technologies that have either just be rolled out or will be in the next couple months.
The first is Google’s new ad “remarketing.” Google’s Matthew Yalowitz announced the new technology at a panel moderated by yours truly and discussed its potential impact on online campaign fundraising. What it does for a campaign is track who visits your website or fundraising page. You can then target those specific users with Google ad words or other advertisements on any other website on which Google places ads. So let’s say you know your fundraising base likely reads the New York Times. You can have Google place your fundraising ads on the NYT’s website for users that have already visited your online fundraising page. Pretty cool, right? (A note: Yalowitz admits that this will only work for campaigns that get a lot of web traffic because otherwise the universe you are “remarketing” to (ie. the folks that have already been to your website) would be too small.)
Microsoft is looking to wade into campaigns with the launch of its “Campaign Ready” program package. One program is entitled “TownHall,” which is a cloud computing based application that runs on Microsoft’s Azure platform. TownHall appears to be free – anyone can download the code from the Campaign Ready website.
After hearing hints of walking applications in the Scott Brown campaign, we have been waiting to see a high level iPhone canvassing app and it looks like emotive has delivered one in iCanvas. The campaign loads a walk list – including everything known about voter in an area – and survey into a canvasser’s iPhone. The canvasser then clicks on an address to see where it is on a Google Map and who lives there. The canvasser enters the responses to the survey directly on the phone. The data is all held on the phone, so having immediate access to a 3G network isn’t necessary. When the canvasser gets back to headquarters, he or she plugs in the iPhone and the data syncs automatically with the campaign’s database.
Keep an eye out for Vote IQ, which is set to launch at the Personal Democracy Forum in June. Dubbed “America’s first political networking platform,” Vote IQ is setting out to be the Facebook of politics. One interesting feature: Vote IQ will use algorithms similar to those found on Match.com to connect the user to politicians around the country who share a similar ideology. From a campaign’s perspective, that would, in theory, match pols with potential donors. Vote IQ is funded by Seattle venture capitalists and we’re told it will have an “Apple-esque” feel.
Also at the conference was AOL, which is gearing their online advertising and political marketing division.
What other new technologies did we miss at the conference? Feel free to shoot me an email at jjacobs@politicsmagazine.comJeremy P. Jacobs is the staff writer at Politics Magazine. He can be reached at jjacobs@politicsmagazine.com Follow him at @jeremypjacobs