The combination of Vice President Harris’ background and GOP VP nominee J.D. Vance’s connection to the Indian-American community has emphasized the importance of Asian/Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters in 2024.
“There’s a huge opportunity here for Kamala Harris and, to a certain degree too, the Trump-Vance campaign to really focus in on AAPI voters, especially Indian voters,” said Jess Ellis, who works on the politics team at video advertising company VDX.tv.
It’s a sharp change from cycles past when targeting these communities was not a high priority for many campaigns. Ellis noted that clients in previous cycles tended to focus on reaching Latino voters–if they planned a multicultural, multilingual effort at all.
“There are so many ways to try to ID different groups through behavioral targeting and contextual targeting beyond just the basic census demographics or voter registration information that you might be able to get from, [say], L2,” she said. “Are we doing stuff in-language? How are we paying attention to the language settings on their browsers?”
Geo-fencing is also a way to reach these voters. “If there’s a local grocery store that we know is frequented, how are we going after folks that are trafficking through that grocery store?,” she said. “People are more online than ever before, especially AAPI communities, [which] actually have more streaming apps on their television than the general market.”
“So there’s really an opportunity here to connect with folks, whether that’s on their cellphones, on their TVs, or however we can find them.”
