LTO Links #295

Viral Social Politics Gets Serious

Learn. Test. Optimize.

Issue #295 |  

Advertising

Navigating the Shifting Ad Terrain in 2022

"As more political ad dollars navigate away from Facebook and other walled-garden platforms, another challenge that digital practitioners face is navigating the different metrics that other companies or vendors return. This is especially difficult when measuring the effectiveness of persuasion spots, the practitioners said, where the end result isn’t the bedrock metric of a voter clicking to make a donation."

Campaigns

Can getting dunked on online win an election?

"He’s following a now tried-and-true playbook of whipping up views on the Internet, then leveraging that attention to build a national audience. Sometimes it can provide a powerful nationwide donor base, but increasingly candidates are recognizing that while an online following is a currency worth amassing, it can be unwieldy."

This Firm Made Republicans Go Viral – Now It's Falling Apart

"But while that pitch has made Arsenal one of the most talked-about campaign shops in Republican politics, workers inside the company tell a different story. Six former employees who spoke to The Verge described a chaotic working environment, rife with internal bullying, toxic HR practices, and an intense culture of secrecy. That uncertainty has seen three employees leave the company in the last two weeks, and many insiders suspect the company’s problems are just beginning."

Fundraising

Suns out, guns out: In 2022 campaign merch doesn’t need sleeves

"To create the line, Studio Gradients explored influences including the Sixers and the NBA’s City Edition jerseys, and they played with different fonts and a neon yellow and black design before settling on the finished products."

International

Non-political Facebook pages used for election disinformation – study

"By disguising themselves as interest-based pages, these seemingly non-political Facebook pages continue to obscure their identities in order to engage and take advantage of large, unsuspecting audiences who may have initially liked these pages for reasons unrelated to politics."

Social Media

Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine

"The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community."

Trump's allies say his Twitter ban has backfired as they keep his voice loud on the social network: 'It's a net benefit'

"Journalists race to be the first to post Trump's deliberately tweet-like statements that his office sends over email."

Technology

Public Affairs Startup Speak4 Sees Room for Disruption in the Advocacy Market

As a practitioner who was using the tools to advocate through those digital channels, Mansour saw “system flaws and problems” with existing platforms — problems that weren’t being addressed, he said, despite being raised with the providers. It caused enough frustration that they: “… got fed up. We’re like, screw this, ‘let’s go build our own mouse trap.’ That was sort of the genesis.”

Political text messaging is having a moment

"What we found was pretty astonishing: it turned out IDs gathered through knocking doors didn’t really hold up. Only 25% of respondents who were canvassed at the door actually identified as Bernie supporters in the poll. We assumed this was because they just wanted us off their porch, but it’s hard to say for sure. With texting, it was flipped! About 75% of the IDs gathered through texting held up as legitimate support for Bernie during that poll. So it turns out, people are honest over text message!"