Obama reaching his target demographic with online ads

I'm not necessarily an Obama supporter, but I've got to give him credit; I'm seeing a lot more of his ads than John McCain's. Each politician has a different campaign strategy that focuses on different demographics. One might hypothesize that a democrat would be more likely to target young voters. Based on my recent experience, this is proving to be true.

I'm 25 years old. I don't watch MTV, I'm not in college, and I don't really care for pop culture -- some of the idiosyncrasies you might associate with today's 18-25 demographic. But I can't deny the residing ubiquity of Obama's ads and the comparative absense of ads from John McCain. If Obama is targeting young voters, he's doing a good job. If McCain is trying to not target young voters, he's doing just as well.

Obama is advertising on Facebook, a platform on which my friends and I fulfill most of our communication needs. He's also advertising on Pandora, the music site that I have turned on in the background all day when I'm at work. Traditionally (with as much weight as that term holds given how young they are), these are sites that are visited by net surfers in my youthful demographic.

I wouldn't expect a Republican candidate to spend as much as a Democrat advertising to young voters; young voters tend to lean more to the left. So the purpose of this post is not to discredit John McCain, but rather to credit Barack Obama for being smart about placing his ads in front of my [young] eyes. John McCain's campaign would be wise to be as effectively creative with how it delivers its ads to its own target demographics.

Where else have you seen Obama's political ads? Or are you a target demographic for John McCain? If so, what creative advertising strategies have you seen?

Gmail -- now with a dry sense of humor

As you may know, Gmail's computers explore our emails' content in hopes to learn more about us as consumers. Thomas Friedman predicted this type of marketing in The World is Flat by using the example of a young couple searching the internet for information about their soon-to-come first child. With their how-to results came customized ads for baby crap, like strollers, bottles, and toys. Friedman envisions these ads to eventually transcend the personal computer and find their way onto consumers' television and radio programs.

We're not quite there yet, but we're getting closer. But even though Google isn't laying down custom television ads, it is picking up on our sarcasm. Consider this:

Unlike me, just about all of my college buddies are single...I mean really single. And they all like to give me grief about my transition from a collegiate knuckle head to a domestic, engaged professional. There is, of course, some serious substance to their argument.

Yesterday, I emailed Steve (website) and mentioned a new piece of furniture that my fiance and I bought for our house. In the nature of giving me a hard time for being 'domestic,' he sent me a very simple, sarcastic reply:

"Well isn't that just adorable."

I shook my head, accepting his remark, but then looked closely at the ads on my screen. One read (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't directly copy an ad), "Dry sense of humor? Check out our funny, sarcastic t-shirts."

How about that?!? Their marketing campaigns have actually evolved from looking from key words to key phrases. Is it possible that they're only looking at those key phrases stated by one man to another? Now I'm curious to know if I would have had the same result if a woman had said that to me. Steve is a registered member of Gmail, so I assume they would have access to his name, maybe gender, and other demographic information.

In all seriousness, this would be an interesting move for Google and its advertisers: evaluating phrases and the context of the conversations in which they are used. I have never had a male friend of mine say "isn't that just adorable" without risking a shoulder punch. But if my great aunt Evelyn said that about a picture of my dog, it would be a different story.

Extracting the context of phrases based on the demographic using the phrase...now THAT's something! I guess they could also extract a searcher's location (based on IP) and give custom results based on local dialects.

I'll be interested to see where Google and custom advertisers take this...