In the News (Week of February 17th)

Yesterday we learned that Pandora can appeal to not only an individual’s music tastes, but also their political ones. In an Allvoices ad:tech piece, Pandora Can Predict Your Political Affiliation, Sells Ads Accordingly, Joe Kukura points to the Internet radio’s ability to target based on the statistical correlations between musical preferences and political leanings. In fact, this formula “can predict listeners' political affiliations with 75 to 80 percent accuracy.”

Who knew music could be so telling? But this news also speaks to an overall trend of how political campaigns are trying to take better advantage of the digital channel for advertising. As our CEO Ray Kingman points out in his Boston.com article on political communications, online advertising is easy, is incredibly effective at motivating and unifying supporters and is only a fraction of the cost of television. Not to mention it allows for targeting at a very precise level. Why target based on one arbitrary data point like music preference? While 75 to 80 percent accuracy is certainly a start, Semcasting offers 100 percent precision due to our extensive and comprehensive data points based on actual voter data.

Semcasting follows the successful approach of zone targeting. Zones allow political campaigns to bid on qualified pre-targeted audiences based on voter history, demographics and location in real time. They also provide online micro-targeting--with each zone typically including 2-10 households--to reach 100 percent of potential online voters.

We may not know who is a Beatles fan, but we can reach the right voters with the right message. 8 days a week.