For Political Ads, A New Web Micro-Network
A campaign sticker for Hillary Clinton is seen on a laptop computer at the Clinton campaign field office in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Feb. 4, 2016.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergIt was just past 10 a.m. on a Saturday in mid-October when Dan Beckmann pulled his rented SUV into the gravelly parking lot of Jack Cobb & Son, a barbecue joint in Farmville, N.C. He had only two days to shoot 10 video segments on barbecue that will run on the website of WTVD, the ABC affiliate in Durham. The rush had nothing to do with the station’s interest in smoked meat. Beckmann’s company, Programming Corporation of America (PCA), had sold advertising on the barbecue videos to a super-PAC, with a promise they’d be viewed 500,000 times before Election Day.
Political campaigns have seized on online advertising as an efficient way to reach ever narrower groups of voters. Web ads combine the persuasive power of a TV ad with the precision targeting of a mailer, phone call, or knock at the door from a volunteer. Political ad buyers especially love the time right before a web video begins, known as the pre-roll, which is hard for viewers to skip.