Digital Marketing and Surprise Elections

Parliament has just voted to go ahead with the snap election that Theresa May called yesterday in a Downing Street press conference.

This is a surprise given her previous comments that the country required a ‘period of stability’ in the wake of last year’s referendum, but the Prime Minister explained today that her decision was made based on other parties opposing the Conservative plans for leaving the European Union: she believes an election will give her a clear mandate for her vision of Brexit.

This is big news for the digital world: elections are won and lost online now, as this is where the majority of information is seen, absorbed and acted upon: the party who can put the most persuasive case online, in a format the majority of people interact with will be in the best position to take a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

This almost certainly means Native and social: traditional display ads are responsible for the rise in Adblock software. They are intrusive, disrupt the browser’s experience and increasingly have the opposite effects that an advert should: creating negative associations of annoyance and frustration with a brand. Even when they aren’t using an Adblocker, users are adept at simply ignoring adverts they don’t want to see.

To get their message across online, the major parties will have to use Native formats: ads that complement the publisher they appear on, so users can read and absorb the key information without having their browsing experience interrupted.

They’ll also be making sure they’re targeting the right adverts for the right voters: creating profiles of the people they want to sway using demographic and social data to make sure their spend on advertising is maximally effective: Labour doesn’t want to waste limited resources on ‘persuading’ dyed in the wool voters, but will be going overboard to identify concentrations of young people in swing constituencies to get their information in front of.