Data crunching experts help Obama take the Presidency
These days with everything being so digital from our relationships with friends and family to even the most professional business transactions data is growing at an enormous rate. Not all data is created equal and some data has increased worth when it is matched with other important data. For example these days with social networks holding so many key facts about us such as who our friends are, who influences us and what we buy advertisers are able to target their messages even more effectively.
Now you can deliver the right message, custom tailored to just the right user. Politicians use this as well and are finding that they can better influence their existing followers and recruit more support. Often times this is called narrow casting which refers to being able to deliver specific campaign messages to just the relevant people. For example a president running for office may want to e-mail blast or have an internet wide banner ad for his NRA support only show to people who are part of the NRA. This is an intelligent move as it decreases the potential opposition to a position that you may hold as well as increases the likelihood that those targeted will convert into a supporter of some form.
For Obama he was able to find key areas of influence such as finding that working with George Clooney could improve his standings with West Coast females between 40-49. These days social networks and advertisers are able to track on the type of links you click, how often, the content, and what type of information you share and enjoy… they can even track how long you spend on a given article or website engaged with it. This means you can find the top influencers of your target demographic and go directly after them.
To win this year, he hired an analytics team five times larger than that of his 2008 campaign. CNN has more on what else this team of data scientists found and why he even has codenames for them.
