There is a reason Hillary Clinton officially announced her presidential campaign via social media rather than television.
Not that a broadcast message isn't the most effective way to get a candidate's point across. Online advertising firms have simply grown faster than anyone could have imagined since the 2012 election. They're rapidly becoming the most efficient way to target a specific group of voters in specific areas of the country.
Candidates know it. Voters will see if flood their social media pages. And, Soon enough, both will realize just how profitable it will make United States advertising firms.
Online political advertising could quadruple to $1 billion for the upcoming election, according to Reuters report published Tuesday. It is on pace to become the first election where more advertising dollars are spent online than in mail, newspapers, or telemarketing. Given that television viewers often skip recorded programs, online advertising may become the top form of communication by the next election cycle.
"Television is still the most effective way to get your message out there," said Vincent Galko, a consultant for Republican congressman Ryan Costello, in speaking with the publication. "But when you have a finite budget and expensive market, targeting online and through social media is very effective."
President Barack Obama was the first to populate your favorite websites with political propaganda in 2008. The internet-dependent strategy carried into his 2012 re-election where Obama outspent GOP nominee Mitt Romney by nearly $26 million; the candidates' combined online ad budget increased by $56 million.
While online advertising only account for eight percent - $955 million- of a campaign's media budgets, the number in hundreds of millions times greater than what they spent four years ago.
The funds don't just go to pop-up ads and sidebars. Companies "slice and dice" electorate battlegrounds to hone in on specific voters; they don't just look at neighborhoods, they look at individual homes.
Partisan data firms analyze data from 190 registered voters and delineate demographics, voting tendencies, and geographic features. Next, firms like Targeted Victory and DSPolitical look over commercial available data like internet history, tax records, and the worth of one's home.
By this point, Republican and Democratic strategists know who to target.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul released his first campaign advertisement of the election cycle appropriately launched on LibertyNotHillary.com, and anti-Clinton website his staff created. In it, he blasts Clinton for being too big a part of the "Washington Machine." He also accused the former first lady of multiple fallacies, including corruption, conflicts of interest, and of maintaining an arrogance of power.
It's just the first of countless attack ads that will draw internet users nationwide. For online advertising firms, it's the beginning of a very profitable election season.