LTO Links #43

How Pat Toomey used Facebook to win

Your weekly must reads

This week's must read is Facebook Advertising's case study on Pat Toomey's successful re-election. His team did groundbreaking work on the platform last year.

LTO Links

Issue #43 |

Advertising

Great look at what the Toomey campaign did with Facebook advertising...one of the most sophisticated and innovative uses of the platform in 2016:

Facebook says it can sway elections after all—for a price

"On its marketing site, the social network cited its role in Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey’s extremely narrow win in November. Facebook noted that custom ads on its platform were able to “significantly shift voter intent and increase favorability” for Toomey, who won by roughly 86,000 votes out of about 6 million cast.

"The Republican spent “a large portion” of his $2.8 million digital strategy budget with Facebook; his digital budget was more than double that of his Democratic challenger, Kate McGinty."

Toomey for Senate

"The results proved that using made-for-Facebook content was a winning strategy. In response, the team refined its media strategy, shifting away from using television ads on Facebook and towards a media strategy that included custom creative designed for the Facebook News Feed environment."

Content

Fact-checking changes minds but not votes, according to new research

"The rub, of course, is that Trump supporters were just as likely to vote for their candidate after being exposed to his inaccuracies. The paper found that voting preferences didn't vary among Republicans who didn't support Trump, either. Only Democrats said they were even less likely to vote Trump."

YouTube is eating cable and cable is transitioning into a platform, rather than its own end:

Google Takes on Cable With ‘YouTube TV’—40 Channels for $35

"Just $35 a month gets you six accounts and access to live TV from more than 40 providers including the big broadcast networks, ESPN, regional sports networks and dozens of popular cable networks. Subscriptions include cloud DVR with unlimited storage, AI-powered search and personalization, and access to YouTube Red programming."

YouTube is coming to Comcast’s Xfinity X1 set-top box

"The integration will allow X1 users to launch the app by saying “YouTube” into the X1 voice remote, as well as browse featured content on YouTube, search the entire library, including by voice, and sign into to access their own personalized YouTube settings and subscriptions.

"Comcast says around half of its 22.5 million Xfinity customers have the newer X1 set-top box system..."

Social

Twitter continues to take the lead in putting an end to online harassment, but will these new changes allow us to make our information bubbles bigger?

Twitter will now let you mute specific words from your timeline — and mute ‘eggs’ without profile photos

"You’ll now be able to mute specific words — including other usernames — from your timeline, not just your notifications. You can mute words indefinitely, or for a day, week or month."

Good social media takes top-to-bottom commitment and years of hard work...plus, VP of Cookies is a real job title:

The definitive oral history of the Oreo ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ Super Bowl tweet

"

Lisa Mann, then-

vp

of cookies at Kraft:

I always say, that it took two years to do that tweet. Everyone thinks it just happened. We’d made this decision, with Oreo’s 100th birthday coming up, that we were America’s No. 1 cookie, and a part of everyone’s personal cultural journeys.

Sarah Hofstetter, CEO, 360i:

So Oreo got the muscle memory because of Daily Twist, the campaign to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Oreo. We started experimenting with commenting on culture. None of this would have happened if they hadn’t gotten comfortable with that concept."