{"id":14701,"date":"2024-06-04T11:37:43","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T09:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/why-facebook-wont-be-influential-in-the-uk-general-election\/"},"modified":"2024-06-04T11:37:43","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T09:37:43","slug":"why-facebook-wont-be-influential-in-the-uk-general-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/why-facebook-wont-be-influential-in-the-uk-general-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Facebook won\u2019t be influential in the UK general election"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s newsletter: All-powerful \u2018microtargeting\u2019 swaying the masses into voting a certain way was always overblown, but these days social media has moved on \u2013 and so have the parties<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard the one about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlamp? After an age pacing back and forth, scouring the floor for them, his friend asks him where he thinks he dropped them. He points across the road, to a patch of darkness. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you looking there, then,\u201d he friend asks. He shrugs. \u201cBecause this is where the light is.\u201d Good joke. Everybody laughs.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about online political adverts.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect to see Cambridge Analytica-style microtargeted political adverts driven by personal data during this general election: the tactic is now considered by many to be an ineffective \u201cred herring\u201d and is increasingly being blocked by social media platforms. The digital strategist Tom Edmonds said Facebook had banned political campaigns from using many of the tactics deployed in past contests. \u201cRunning a campaign aimed at 500 people didn\u2019t earn them much money and just got them loads of shit,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

The strategy is known within the party as the \u201c80\/20\u201d approach, in which it focuses all its spending on the 80 seats it came closest to losing in 2019 and the 20 seats it came closest to winning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ad spending reports on Facebook show that these constituencies are exactly where the party is funnelling its money. More than half of the party\u2019s spending on the social network since January has gone to its 80 tightest seats, or to seats it does not hold at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

TikTok is free \u2013 it does not allow paid-for advertising by politicians or parties \u2013 but not easy: the social media teams need to work harder to persuade the app\u2019s notoriously opaque algorithm to organically float their content on to users\u2019 phones, which becomes more likely as more people like, share, comment or re-post videos. For smaller, agile parties with low budgets, TikTok will feel like there is everything to win: views, engagement and people who finally find out who they are. Creators who know how it\u2019s done believe Labour has had a better start.<\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nIn this week\u2019s newsletter: All-powerful \u2018microtargeting\u2019 swaying the masses into voting a certain way was always overblown, but these days social media has moved on \u2013 and so have the parties
\nYou\u2019ve heard the one about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlamp? After an age pacing back and forth, scouring the floor for them, his friend asks him where he thinks he dropped them. He points across the road, to a patch of darkness. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you looking there, then,\u201d he friend asks. He shrugs. \u201cBecause this is where the light is.\u201d Good joke. Everybody laughs.
\nLet\u2019s talk about online political adverts.
\nDon\u2019t expect to see Cambridge Analytica-style microtargeted political adverts driven by personal data during this general election: the tactic is now considered by many to be an ineffective \u201cred herring\u201d and is increasingly being blocked by social media platforms. The digital strategist Tom Edmonds said Facebook had banned political campaigns from using many of the tactics deployed in past contests. \u201cRunning a campaign aimed at 500 people didn\u2019t earn them much money and just got them loads of shit,\u201d he said.
\nThe strategy is known within the party as the \u201c80\/20\u201d approach, in which it focuses all its spending on the 80 seats it came closest to losing in 2019 and the 20 seats it came closest to winning.
\nAd spending reports on Facebook show that these constituencies are exactly where the party is funnelling its money. More than half of the party\u2019s spending on the social network since January has gone to its 80 tightest seats, or to seats it does not hold at all.
\nTikTok is free \u2013 it does not allow paid-for advertising by politicians or parties \u2013 but not easy: the social media teams need to work harder to persuade the app\u2019s notoriously opaque algorithm to organically float their content on to users\u2019 phones, which becomes more likely as more people like, share, comment or re-post videos. For smaller, agile parties with low budgets, TikTok will feel like there is everything to win: views, engagement and people who finally find out who they are. Creators who know how it\u2019s done believe Labour has had a better start. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s newsletter: All-powerful \u2018microtargeting\u2019 swaying the masses into voting a certain way was always overblown, but these days social media has moved on \u2013 and so have the parties You\u2019ve heard the one about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlamp? After an age pacing back and forth, scouring the …<\/p>\n

Why Facebook won\u2019t be influential in the UK general election<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}