e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Karl Rove’s Raising Money for Elizabeth Warren?

December 21st, 2011

Well, not willingly — a week or two back, Warren’s campaign for Massachusetts senator was running online display ads asking for donations to her “response fund” to reply to the television attacks Rove’s American Crossroads had launched against her (I was too swamped to write them up at the time). Warren’s ads featured the very flattering picture of Rove to the right, which is a great example of using an enemy unpopular with your supporters to mobilize them to act on your behalf.

I saw Warren’s ads on Epolitics.com and shortly thereafter on Space.com, but it’s impossible to tell what kind of targeting was involved. Was the campaign geo-targeting DC internet users? Was the targeting topical on political sites (mine) or sites likely to attract a certain kind of reader (Space.com)? Or, perhaps I was seeing them everywhere because of some kind of cookie-based retargeting based on sites I’d visited earlier. (See the most recent Campaigns & Elections Tech Bytes column for more on ad targeting options.)

Screenshots below — note the near-takeover of the top of Space.com.

– cpd