[Commentary] Whether President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins the presidential election contest, no one expects a repeat of the funding made available by the Recovery Act. But at the same time, no one expects that the Universal Service Fund will be diminished. The past four years have already brought substantial changes in America’s broadband capabilities. These data-driven tools are now available to everyone.
[Commentary] Thankfully, we’re just hours away from surviving the loudest, longest and most media-saturated segment of the entire campaign season. Single debate references have fueled new media plans before, but perhaps not quite as extensive a shift as “binders full of women” in particular.
Ad placement became prevalent on cable networks to address female voters overnight. HGTV, Food Network and Lifetime joined an already aggressive schedule across History Channel, FX, USA and other top-tier cable networks. Male-skewing networks that are typical election targets were freed up by this shift and were being offered as makegoods for other networks. TV saw an increased presence in daytime talk shows, soap operas and prime access to enhance the morning and news-focused areas. Even radio formats that were skewing female were utilized by Obama’s team to promote his stance on women’s rights and related issues. Other trends we have seen unfold in the last few weeks speak to each medium. Multiple Presidential, PAC-fueled, issue-related, and local candidate messages fill the airwaves. At least 70% of commercial breaks are filled with political ads. Opposing sides that are sometimes adjacent to each other and spot wear out are even more accelerated, with a single candidate appearing multiple times in one commercial pod. In addition to the obvious lesson around not over-saturating any one target or media outlet, one of the biggest takeaways from this campaign season is the need for flexibility in media plans.
[Inkrot is senior specialist, broadcast at Empower MediaMarketing]
How well does the next president of the United States know you? Depends on your apps.
By virtue of what you install on your computer or cellphone, your political preferences can become part of the soup of data that ad networks can mine — in this case on behalf of the presidential hopefuls, who are making their last push for reluctant or undecided voters. The Facebook apps of the Obama and Romney campaigns inhale a lot of information about you and your friends. Like many apps on Facebook, they gather your Facebook ‘likes’ and locations, along with your Facebook friends’ ‘likes’ and locations. Both can post content on your behalf; the Obama campaign app can even post what political contributions you have made. Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.me, which offers browser plug-ins to stave off the data collection, points out the weirdest feature. The Obama app “initiates an unencrypted client-side request to get your profile,” which means that if you’re using a public wireless connection, anyone with access to the network can see you’re using the app. As for the campaigns’ mobile apps, both have little pieces of code embedded in them to enable tracking. Both the Obama and Romney mobile apps send user data to a variety of companies, to serve ads and analyze user behavior, according to an analysis of both by PrivacyChoice, a firm based in Santa Cruz.
It might have been the friendliest rally to ever come to the Mall — especially three days before the election. Puppets and toddlers danced. Grown-ups in furry costumes sang. A girl dressed as Cookie Monster handed out Chips Ahoy to passersby. There was even a puppet-themed wedding. The Million Puppet March — a political rally against Mitt Romney’s debate remarks about Big Bird and cutting funding to public television — may not have actually been a million puppets strong, but furry monsters came from far and near in a post-Halloween parade of support for PBS.
As Americans cast their votes for the next president, the Obama campaign and its supporters have maintained an unexpected advantage in the ad wars -- defying predictions that the Democrat would be drowned out by a flood of cash from deep-pocketed conservative groups (at least before a spending splurge by outside groups this past weekend). But outside groups have propelled Republicans to a strong advantage in another set of races: the battle for the US House of Representatives. Republican candidates have run more ads than their Democratic opponents in 104 contested races, while Democrats hold the edge in 77, according to spot counts by Kantar Media’s CMAG. And the Republican edge in the House is driven primarily by outside groups such as super PACs and nonprofits.
On Election day, NBC will dive deeply into social media to capture as many second- and third-screeners as it can for moment-to-moment accounting, analysis and interaction. NBC will use the Zeebox social TV platform among its ramped up Election Day offerings. “We’ll be able to push custom content to people that are within the Zeebox experience watching NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC,” said Ryan Osborn, VP of digital innovation at NBC.
Google’s Motorola Mobility subsidiary said that a Wisconsin federal court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Apple against the device maker. Apple is seeking to have the dismissal made “without prejudice,” -- a legal term that essentially means that the matter could be heard later.
Working up a holiday shopping list? New cell phone, iPad Mini, Netflix subscription - check, check, check. Now don't forget the wireless plan that makes all those family gifts work on the move. Pricing has changed dramatically since last year.
Phone calls and text messages come in unlimited quantities in the latest featured deals from the big four wireless phone companies - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA. The competition lies in data. "Data" means the stuff consumers increasingly gobble up as they use wireless devices to browse the Internet, download or update apps, play online games and watch videos. Consumers have gotten used to buying a data plan for each device. Now, however, the wireless industry has split. Sprint and T-Mobile continue to pitch their offer of unlimited data plans for cell phones and other devices such as tablets. Verizon and AT&T have introduced shared data plans. These allow a household to connect up to 10 devices - phones, tablets, hotspots - to one pool of data that they share. The key: It is a limited pool. Shared data pricing means consumers have to pay more to use more data. It's just like the traditional cell phone plans that charged more for more minutes of voice time.
Twitter has adopted a new policy for how it handles tweets that contain or link to copyright infringing material and will no longer delete them from its feed in an effort to shed more light on how it processes take-down notices from copyright owners. Instead, Twitter will flag to other users that the tweet in question is being withheld from the website's feed for copyright reasons after it receives a "valid" take-down notice from a copyright owner, a Twitter spokesman said. The tweet will be flagged by Twitter "until such time as we get (if we ever do) a valid counter-response from the user," according to the spokesman.
Little progress has been made toward implementing a “Do Not Track” button for the Web more than nine months after a highly publicized launch event at the White House. Advertisers, privacy groups and government officials came together in February to tout their agreement to give Internet users an easy way to opt out of online tracking. But stakeholders involved in the effort are "not really any closer to an agreement" to make the feature happen, according to Mike Zaneis, general counsel of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Jonathan Mayer, a privacy advocate and graduate student at Stanford University, said negotiations are at a "standstill," with the two sides unlikely to bridge their differences on core issues.
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