2012 Presidential Campaign and the Importance/Value of a Vote
Political campaigns have changed by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. In today’s day and age, most of their top marketing techniques revolve around the use of the Internet and ads. They base their amount that they will pay on ads upon how much they would pay for a single vote, paying more for the votes that they think will be more influential. The average advertisement spending for a single vote is about $22, while the average maximum spending is $50, but it can shoot past that amount.
The campaigns seem to pay for their ads on a per impression basis instead of a per click basis. They are paying to spread their influence, not necessarily sell a product, although a candidate could be considered a product. The campaigns base their spending on a “per-vote” basis, instead of a “per-click” basis. Vote value is based upon state, voting history, donations, gender, amount of news read online and number of Facebook friends to whom one could spread their influence. The reason that the number of Facebook friends an individual has is important because 85% of Americans are annoyed by political ads within Facebook, but avidly ready their friend’s political posts. Campaigns often buy data from online news sites, because they implement many online trackers that are useful to track how often one reads news about the campaign. Overall, campaigns spend 30% more to reach those they have tagged as “influenceable”.
http://www.livescience.com/24478-what-your-vote-is-worth-to-campaigns.html