Dive Brief:
- Cambridge Analytica ran digital ad campaigns for Trump in order to reach undecided voters as announced in a company press release. The company updated on a daily basis which voters were undecided and then divided these into 12 to 15 subgroups to create highly targeted messaging.
- The digital push consisted of 4,000 individual digital ad campaigns backing the Republican candidate, reaching millions of unique viewers and totaling 1.5 billion impressions.
- The strategy included native advertising, programmatic Lightbox ads, ad networks, search engines, Facebook, Twitter Conversational ads and Snapchat.
Dive Insight:
Digital disruption continues to extend its reach in the marketing industry, with this year's presidential election an example of how technology can be used to hone in on narrowly targeted groups such as undecided voters while keeping overall costs down.
The Trump campaign failed to raise as much money as Clinton's campaign, which may be one reason the decision was made to largely eschew traditional linear TV until the final stretch before the election, settling for a large volume of earned media instead. The candidate also took to social media personally while Cambridge Analytica handled a robust digital ad effort.
While Trump’s digital firm is touting its success, his election could have at least a short-term impact on the ad industry overall. Executives from major agencies agree that expectations for Q1 digital ad spending next year are down after Trump’s election. Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy and WPP’s GroupM global CEO Kelly Clark told the Wall Street Journal they see a pause in ad spending as the industry figures out what sort of impact Trump will have on the industry. The concern comes from uncertainty around policies Trump might enact that could impact the industry.