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Candidates' Web Sites Get to Know the Voters
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Who's Blogging  |
Using sentiment detection, Specific Media can judge whether a blog about the Iraq War or tax cuts is generally in favor or opposed to those policies. That helps them determine the political leanings of a visitor.
Gathering data on all the Web visits people make, the company can then present a political campaign with "buckets" of voters described as Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, and by what specific issues the person -- identified by a cookie on their browser -- may be interested in.
"You look at the patterns -- you take known Democrats and say, 'How do they behave on the Web?' " Jakubowski said. "One data point doesn't put you in a data bucket. If you read a lot of U.S. politics, whether it's blogs or news or opinion, and you tend to read more of the stuff about conservative policies, you will then end up in a more conservative bucket."
He said that when the company identifies someone's party affiliation, the information proves to be nearly 100 percent accurate.
Similarly, Yahoo collects information about the 140 million unique monthly visitors to its sites. The company records what kinds of stories a user has read at Yahoo News -- one of the most popular news sites, as well as what search terms a person has entered in the company's search engine.
Yahoo began a year and a half ago, creating sets of Web behaviors that matched any of the potential candidates -- even former vice president Al Gore, who never entered the race but was a long-rumored possibility.
The "buckets" that Yahoo offers to candidates indicate a voter's interests. There are categories for the Iraq war, energy and the economy and also whether they are "Obama-interested" or "McCain-interested."
"To see the two presidential campaigns using behavioral targeting is very telling of how powerful a marketing tool it is," said Mike Zaneis, vice president of policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "There is a growing level of awareness that there is a certain level of tracking going on online. But they may be surprised how prevalent its use is in political campaigns."
