Prospects for personalized political marketing

Contextual or targeted advertising has in a relatively short time become a force to be reckoned with. Pioneered by Google’s AdSense, targeting advertising has become a multibillion dollar industry. Although normative questions around these advertising schemes have yet to be addressed, they seem to be here to stay. This blog will explore the prospects of this type of advertising for political marketing.

It is only a matter of time before targeted advertising will be used by political parties. In fact the first contours of this could already be seen in the last Dutch elections. Besides having some (but not great) success with regular campaigning options, the liberal party (VVD) in the Netherlands, by implementing marketing strategies from the private sector, had the most prominent and successful campaign in the national elections. Even those voters outside traditional campaigning landscapes were confronted with appealing liberal party slogans and ideas on billboards and on television: much more than has ever been done before.

Example: In every commercial before, between and after a key-party leader’s debate was a liberal party commercial. This in-your-face campaigning style was ridiculed by some, but proved to be both viable and powerful. Even today, people remember and/or know what the liberal party was/is about. Many of the slogans used in its campaigns are remembered to this day. How different is it for those other two traditional ‘ruling parties’: the labour party (PvdA) and Christen-democrats (CDA) who two years later still struggle with communicating their identity to voters.

Targeted advertising is something that will probably be implemented by the liberal party in elections to come. I concentrate here on the Dutch liberal party here for the following reasons:

1. They had the most efficient and up to date marketing schemes in last elections, which heavily borrowed from the private sector. This will continue in the future.
2. Because of the relatively high economic status of its electorate, the party has in the past struggled with traditional campaigning options. Its electorate is less willing ànd has less time to volunteer with canvassing.
3. (Therefore) Unlike the other traditional ruling parties, which are now quickly becoming electorally marginalized, the liberal party has been able, and willing, to implement private sector marketing schemes in the past.
4. The party has an electoral individual bias. Targeting individuals in addition to “the great masses” is in the party’s nature.

There is no reason why targeted or contextual advertising could not, or would not, be used by political parties. Search-queries, IP web browsing histories, shopping results, etc. are all powerful tools in analysing voter preferences and for vote-maximization.

How might targeted advertising be put to use in political marketing? For example: as with general online advertising, web users could be confronted with the party’s advertisements after visiting the party website. Internet users who are regularly visiting sports websites could be confronted with a slogan concerning a party’s position on sports and a link to the section of the party’s program concerning sports. These strategies are very easy to implement and the implications could be enormous. Advertising schemes could also be much more complex. Web users who visit (political) websites with key-words on them concerning either broad social-economic or very specific policy areas could be confronted with slogans and (sections from) party program that are streamlined to fit their preferences. There are no technological limitations to this: the algorithms to do this are already put to use by the private sector.

There are normative questions involved. One could ask if the market for political campaigns is the same as that of consumer goods and services. Shouldn’t political parties be held –and hold themselves- to greater scrutiny than private institutions? Although I believe these are important questions, I also believe that these questions will be answered through the democratic process. If it in fact proves to be considered unethical behaviour by the electorate, these targeted schemes will disappear quickly enough. However, we should keep a close eye on developments in this area and shine light on them when they surface. For surface they will.