Digital Campaigning Reaches New Heights in 2016 Election

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital advertising finally came into its own during the 2016 presidential election. No longer just an extension of television commercials, its sheer volume and sophistication represents a step change in how campaigns can engage audiences online.

At the forefront was Cambridge Analytica's Digital Team, which planned and executed the digital advertising strategy that won over undecided voters for President-elect Trump, in collaboration with Brad Parscale and the Republican National Committee.

Online ads placed by Cambridge Analytica were viewed a staggering 1.5 billion times by millions of Americans, after the company ran 4,000 individual digital ad campaigns backing the Republican candidate.

The way a campaign can direct the right messages to the right voters has improved dramatically since the 2012 election. Using its own research and data, Cambridge Analytica was able to review and update on a daily basis which voters were undecided. These voters were further divided into 12-15 subgroups, which meant advertising campaigns were highly-targeted.

Cambridge Analytica's data science and polling teams advised on how to tailor advertising towards the issues that undecided voters cared most about, allowing the campaign to spend its resources as efficiently as possible for maximum impact.

The firm carried out thousands of highly-targeted advertising campaigns across dozens of digital media channels, including programmatic platforms, ad networks, search engines, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

"Our cutting-edge digital capabilities allowed the campaign to reach voters more effectively than ever before, and at a fraction of the cost spent by the Democratic candidate," says Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica CEO. The use of data science and the latest digital marketing technologies allowed the campaign to not just win votes but also recruit volunteers, promote campaign events, and allow supporters to share content with friends.

With only four months to go before Election Day, Cambridge Analytica was able to build from scratch the infrastructure needed for a presidential campaign, and go up against the Clinton campaign's apparatus, which had been eight years in the making. "Presidential campaigns are faced with the unique challenge of creating a marketing operation on par with a multi-billion dollar corporation in a matter of only months, and are forced to work within timelines to show success that defy industry norms," says Molly Schweickert, Head of Digital at the firm.

Cambridge Analytica then used its rigorous data and polling to test the effectiveness of that advertising, which meant that the digital team could continuously adapt and improve its messaging and where it placed its ads.

"The increased sophistication of digital buying means that efficiency alone cannot be a measure of success for digital media; marketers must be able to prove that the advertising is actually having an impact, promoting positive opinions, driving action, and strengthening the overall organizational goals. The expedited timeline in which this needs to occur for a presidential campaign requires a level of sophistication that exceeds commercial standards," says Schweickert.

Through Cambridge Analytica's digital team, Donald Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to leverage many of the emerging trends in the advertising industry, such as native advertising, Twitter Conversational ads and programmatic Lightbox ads.

In addition to the standard offline audience matching methodologies relied on in past election cycles, Cambridge Analytica pioneered an innovative collaboration of data-driven targeting methods to ensure that all key voters were reached with the campaign's messages.

About Cambridge Analytica:

Cambridge Analytica, the U.S. affiliate of SCL Group, is the market leader in the provision of data analytics and behavioral communications for political campaigns, issue groups and commercial enterprises. With cutting-edge technology, pioneering data science, and 25 years of experience in behavior change, CA provides advertisers with unparalleled insight into their audiences. More information can be found at: https://cambridgeanalytica.org.

Media Contact:
North 6^th Agency (for Cambridge Analytica)
212-334-9753
646.325.5314
[email protected]

SOURCE Cambridge Analytica

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https://cambridgeanalytica.org