Campaigns micro targeting voters
The Clinton and Trump campaigns are gathering information about voters without them even knowing it, using Internet searches to target campaign messaging.
“The conventional old-style approach is you simply raise a lot of money and you buy add space on the most popular television shows in a given market and you sort of throw money at the situation,” Marvin Overby, University of Missouri professor of political science, said.
Over the last decade, the Internet has given campaigns the ability to collect, store and utilize data like never before.
Instead of sending a candidate’s message to millions, campaigns are able to “micro target,” appealing to smaller groups or individual based on their Internet habits.
“Companies and parties have developed these ways of matching those sort of basic demographic data with data on where you shop, what news sources you read, what you buy, what advertisements you look at,” Overby said.
Each candidate will spend hundreds of millions of dollars this campaign season. Micro targeting helps campaigns funnel those dollars more efficiently.
“Spending money on , a lot less money, on smaller shows on cable, basic cable, sports shows, or on radio where you get whole lot more bang for your buck because you’re better able to target the voters that you really want to reach,” Overby said.
