Tuesday, September 11, 2012
A Different Campaign
The other day while catching up a on one of my favorite shows on www.hulu.com online a commercial caught my eye. I guess i could say this commercial caught my attention many times as it was replayed during the entire show, "My name is Bill and I'm a Mormon". Online advertisement for our republican candidate Mitt Romney. At that moment i noticed all the subliminal messages going around on the Internet.
We are a generation powered by social media, the internet drives us all and candidates are aware of that. They are spending great amount of money on online videos and advertisements. The most recent information provided by CNN news informs that Obama has surpassed Romney's online spending campaign, he has spent roughly $16.4million dollars on online ads. Is this a smart move? Many people believe it is, it's a great way to reach the young population through youtube vides, tweets, Facebook and advertisements on websites. Online advertisement reaches everyone this year people not only had the option of viewing the debate on television but it was advertised and viewed online. Clips were cut and placed on youtube, comments were written online debates between voters were exchanged. The internet has made the elections grow in a way that might have been unthinkable in prior years. It has reached out to a younger crowd that has not been as involved in previous years. The amount of young voters has been increasing since 2000 and at 2008 it reached an all time high with a 51% of young population voting. So online advertising seems to be working right??
It's important to take into account that just like I am currently writing this article freely online many of the advertisements we might be seeing are being freely written by biased voters trying to get their candidate ahead. While the beauty of the internet is the ability to freely right and express your thoughts it is important to take this into account when looking at advertisements if they do not state they are endorsed by the candidate or do not come from a reliable page it is very likely they are not always going to be true. And even then! Hackers can breach websites and change information or ads created. So remember when surfing your favorite website if you encounter a pop up ad that you find thought provoking and interesting look a little more into it before making a judgment based on this one ad.
Good luck to all in the future elections take advantage of this great tool we posses for information on our candidates but always remember that the truth is not always what it seems.
For further information on the matter::
http://www.sensibleemarketing.com/
For external information on vote statistics:
http://www.yda.org/resources/youth-vote-statistics/
further information on online campaigning::
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/03/politics/online-campaign-spending/index.html
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Hello Claudia, you mentioned that clips were cut out and pasted so that people would be able to view what they didn't get a chance to in the debates. Doesn't this create a higher probability for audiences to see a comment that was taken out of context? Also, unfortunately some ads that say "...I approve this message" may also send a message that was taken out of context.
ReplyDeleteClaudia, I could not agree more that online marketing is the best way to attract more voters. I was in amazed on the increase of young voters on 51%. Young audiences tend to be social media butterflies, and online political campaigns are doing their job by attracting them. At the same time, just like you said, "the truth is never what is seems"; one should look more in depth when encountering something online, because you never know who was the author or creator of whatever your are reading.
ReplyDeleteAs you stated above the amount of money spent on online marketing is crazy. Furthermore, I think it works. You'd think that people would have the sense to make up their own minds, but the truth is people are influenced by this and in my opinion its only going to get worse.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. The Internet has become vital to a presidential candidates campaign. Through the use of ads and accounts on social media they are able to spread their voices across different audiences and interact with them on a more personal level. And yes the amount being spent is very large but seems to be paying off. However, how valid these ads are still remains to be seen. We'll have to see what happens when a candidate wins and see what promises they keep.
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