As the 2016 presidential campaign begins to take shape, candidates are looking to target and influence specific voters, and some will turn to consumer data gathered by Little Rock's Acxiom Corp.
Presidential hopefuls already are meeting with big data firms, including Acxiom, to discuss how to use personal information to target voters online through their social media websites and mobile devices.
"Instead of fishing with a big net, you are trying to use the best lure and catch the fish you want," said Abe Adams, senior director of client strategy and fundraising for Targeted Victory, a digital firm that uses Acxiom data.
Spending by campaigns on online advertising is expected to jump from $15.2 million in 2015 to $955.1 million in 2016, according to a report by Borrell Associates, a consulting firm that tracks advertising spending.
Candidates "who aren't engaged in highly targeted ads won't be successful in their campaigns," said Dan Kully, a partner with Kully Hall Struble, a political strategic communications firm.
Candidates can use consumer data to send targeted advertisements to voters via social media and smartphone applications. They also are using data to solicit donations and to recruit new supporters.
"People are starting to realize that the digital channel for the first time really is accessible," said Dan Lackner, political industry executive for Acxiom. "It's as targetable as putting direct mail in somebody's mailbox."
The use of big data -- troves of personal public information collected by Acxiom and other firms -- in political advertising isn't new.
President Barack Obama's political team was among the first to use detailed data and social media to its advantage in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
"It really started with Obama and Facebook and what he did the first cycle," said Ray Kingman, chief executive officer and founder of Semcasting Inc., a digital advertising firm and partner with Acxiom. "He recognized that the best access point to younger voters was through social media."
Data collected by companies such as Acxiom can include information about people's preferred restaurants, where they shop and what websites they visit. The data collectors can then combine behavioral information with demographic data and voter history to determine who is interested in certain issues and how to motivate them to vote.
"The data can give a campaign a much broader view of who they should be aiming at in terms of persuadable voters they haven't thought to reach before, and at the same time refine their targeting," said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president for political advertising at Kantar Media Intelligence.
The ability to send customized advertisements has improved and is ever more crucial in the early stages of a presidential campaign, considering the large field of candidates, digital advertising strategists say.
"Everybody and their mom [is] running for the Republican nomination," Wilner said. "Digital campaigns are a lot of these candidates' launch strategy. They're all coming out of the gate with pretty sophisticated digital ad campaigns."
Most of the spending on political advertising so far has come from the 17 Republican presidential candidates. However, spending by both Republicans and Democrats is expected to increase in the fall, digital strategists said.
Acxiom is already in discussions with 2016 presidential campaigns on how the consumer information the company collects can be used to reach out to potential voters.
Acxiom's Lackner would not disclose which candidates the company is working with but said the company is in discussions with advertising agencies associated with most of the Republican hopefuls and at least two Democrats.
Acxiom's purchase of marketing service company, LiveRamp, in 2014 gives Acxiom a stronger product for political candidates, Lackner said.
"In the past Acxiom just provided data," Lackner said. "Now we can go to the next level and make that data actionable."
Big data are important to campaigns because "it allows for precision," David Ray, former communications director for Tom Cotton's 2014 U.S. Senate race, said in an email.
"It doesn't matter how good your message is if you're talking to the wrong people," he said. "Data allows you to match the best message possible to voters in the way they are most receptive to."
Ray said Cotton's 2014 campaign used online and social media advertising. Every time a new television ad was released, a corresponding online version would target potential voters on websites such as YouTube, Hulu and MLB.com.
"The advantages are obvious: You can match a voter with a message tailored to an issue they are passionate about, like taxes or health care," Ray said. "That allows your campaign to be more efficient and there's less wasted motion [and money]. There's not much downside."
Facebook probably will be a hot spot for candidates in 2016, analysts said.
Trilogy Interactive Founding Partner Larry Huynh said campaigns can merge voter data with Acxiom data in Facebook's advertising section to target potential supporters.
"If I'm targeting women [aged] 35 to 65 in Little Rock or Northwest Arkansas I can pull those names from the voter file and run ads targeting those folks," said Huynh, an Arkansas native.
Acxiom doesn't disclose prices of its products, but spokesman Ines Gutzmer said political candidates are charged the same as commercial customers.
"Pricing usually varies depending on the number and type of data elements, and the number of records selected by the candidates," she said in an email.
Campaign financial reports don't detail spending with Acxiom, but instead show millions of dollars paid to digital strategy firms that contract with consumer data collectors.
Data-driven advertising isn't cheap, said Washington State University professor Travis Ridout. Most of the presidential candidates can't afford to target voters at the same level as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who have already collected tens of millions of dollars in donations.
"The campaigns with resources do have those algorithms where they can help to identify the propensity of individuals to vote for someone ... a lot of these primary campaigns right now, they don't have the resources to be doing something like that," said Ridout, who researches political advertising. "Certainly we'll see it in the general [election], but a lot of them are less sophisticated at this point than they may lead you to believe."
Changes in how Americans are consuming media and information also has created a greater need for political campaigns to move their advertising efforts to the Internet, strategists said.
"The behaviors of different constituent groups have changed pretty dramatically in eight years," said Semcasting's Kingman.
For example, millennials (those born after 1980) are less likely to have landline telephones or traditional television service. So the only way to successfully reach them is through an advertisement on social media or smartphone applications, he said.
"You go right to people almost instantly through social media," said Gordon Borrell, chief executive officer of Borrell Associates. "That actually reaches and touches people in a much more personal way than a television spot or magazine ad."
SundayMonday Business on 08/09/2015