We’ve talked a lot about Facebook lately, particularly about the challenges candidates face as the social network switches to a pay-to-play environment. But Twitter is changing too, particularly in its advertising. As Twitter rep Jenna Golden explained recently at CampaignTech East, Twitter’s new options present some excellent opportunities for campaigns looking to shape the narrative.
Twitter’s advertising takes the form of “promoted tweets,” tweets that you pay for and that more users see than they ordinarily would. Promoted tweets aren’t new, but in the past year the options for them have become much more sophisticated. Some examples:
Geo-targeting by metropolitan area
Targeting the followers of particular feeds
Targeting users’ interests or the topics they tweet about
Targeting of particular feeds, i.e., serving ads to individual Twitter users through a list you upload
Lookalike targeting: reaching people who resemble the people following a particular feed or a list you upload
TV targeting: people who engage with particular TV shows
Right away we can see ways to get creative. You could target political reporters and bloggers in your state, for instance, keeping your story at the tops of their feeds every time they go to Twitter.
Likewise, you could target their followers, under the assumption that those followers are the politically minded folks you need to persuade or recruit. Other options are GOTV messages to priority audiences, post-debate spin aimed at the chattering class, highlighting a new campaign message, and so on. We’re only limited by the options we can come up with.
Of course, Twitter ads only solve the problems Twitter is good at solving. For most of us in the political world, Twitter is mainly an opinion-leader medium rather than a way to reach the masses directly. As always, know your goals before you open your mouth, or your wallet.
Box your opponent out: Buy these online ads early Former Elizabeth Warren digital director Lauren Miller made a great point on a recent South by Southwest Interactive panel: Pay attention to opportunities to buy certain blocks of online ads early, in part to deny them to your opponent.
An example would be “homepage takeovers” of local media sites around milestones like debate days or the start of early voting. Campaigns usually can’t hog all of the online advertising space in a given medium; the inventory for pre-roll video or banner ads is simply too large to monopolize. But space on a particular media site is different, since they’ll only have so many ad units available. Even complete domination of a local newspaper site might cost as little as a few thousand dollars—a pittance next to a TV buy.
As with most campaign messaging, a homepage takeover typically has more than one audience. You’re trying to reach local voters, sure, but you’ll also have political reporters and bloggers on your mind. Your spin should dominate the local media environment at crucial times, and the earlier you buy, the more likely you are to freeze your opponent out.
Should you post TV ads to Facebook? Another CampaignTech East highlight was a discussion about the role and future of campaign digital directors, starring folks like Alex Kellner (McAulife 2013, McCaskill 2012) and Tim Cameron (Newt Gingrich, NRSC) with real experience on the ground.
You had to have been there to get the full sweep, but here’s one tiny tactical tidbit: at one point, Cameron wondered aloud why campaign staff are so eager to post their TV ads on YouTube. This practice has become de rigueur for campaigns. It started as a way for them to amplify messaging, since posting an ad puts it in front of reporters who would never see it on television. Many “ads” posted to YouTube never actually aired, or did so in tiny numbers, meaning their real audience was outside the district or state in question. How many campaigns posted their ads just to show off to their consultant peers or potential employers?
Cameron’s point is that response is much easier when all you have to do is go to YouTube and see what the other side is doing. No more waiting for someone in the district to see the ad, record it and get it to campaign headquarters. You can track the opposition from a cellphone. YouTube can sometimes save days in response time, Cameron said, which is a lifetime on the campaign trail.
The upshot? Think before you post. Will promoting that TV ad actually help the campaign, or will it just tip off the other guy? The key to a good decision is removing your ego from the equation.
Today’s digital directors are tomorrow’s campaign managers. Just as pollsters and TV ad guys moved from support roles to central leadership in a previous political generation, today’s digital staff will eventually take their expertise, and their mindset, and apply it to the big picture of getting people elected. Will a generation of campaign leaders steeped in the language and customs of interactive media change the way politics is done?
In the 1990s, campaigns were classically top-driven, which fit the style of the pollsters and TV folks who ran them. (TV ads are one-way, not interactive.) What happens when leadership’s experience is in data-driven, online-enabled, grassroots-heavy campaigns?
My prediction is that any remaining internal barriers to online strategies will disappear fast, and just maybe we’ll see some entirely new ways to campaign, ones that shift the paradigm as dramatically as Obama did in 2008.
Colin Delany is founder and editor of the award-winning Epolitics.com and a 15-year veteran of online politics.