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Expect Highly Targeted Online Advertising During Tonight’s Presidential Debate

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Hillary Clinton in a September forum on NBC News.

It’s predicted that tonight’s presidential debate could set a ratings record, with more than 80 million viewers — possibly as many as a 100 million.

That would rival the size of the Super Bowl audience, and would seem like a ripe opportunity for advertisers, including the two campaigns. But you won’t see any ads during the 90-minute event, unless you are watching or interacting online.

There’s a lot at stake in tonight’s debate for the candidates, who are both trying to battle high negatives in the polls and win over undecided voters. And they know that many younger voters — the millennials — are likely to be watching online and engaged in social media interactions as the debate is happening. And that’s exactly where the campaigns will try to reach them.

“The use of social media is about five years old, but this is a phenomenon that’s in great acceleration and reflects the chasing of ad dollars to the places where our citizens are,” says Jim Cook, a professor of social sciences at the University of Maine at Augusta who has studied political advertising on social media.

Cook points to what happened during the primary debates, in which candidates and independent campaign committees used online ads to bolster themselves or knock down opponents. Ads are placed on newsfeeds and search engine results based on the audience a candidate is trying to reach.

Cook says people do not realize how much information about themselves they give up as they roam the internet.

“People can track you, corporations can track you when you post on social media, and they can track what happens when they post an ad. Who clicks, where do they go through to,” he says.

And all of that information is a treasure trove for campaigns as they try to reach potential voters. University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer says ads on social media could be crucial for finding, and winning over, younger voters in this election.

“My students talk about what somebody tweeted and what the response was and what they saw on various feeds, coming in on their various social media feeds, far more than what they encounter on the more traditional media,” he says.

And he says the messaging in online ads can be far more targeted than those distributed through traditional media such as newspapers and TV. Digital ads are even sold differently, using an auctionlike system where an advertiser, candidate or campaign identifies the target group by age, location and gender.

One targeted group, for example, might be young potential voters in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District that have expressed interest in a candidate during the debate. Brewer says as polls across the country show that many millennials are undecided or only weakly supporting a candidate, those targeted ads could pay off.

“Really could be crucial to swinging this election, both in terms of whether they turn out and who they vote. If you’re looking at those voters, putting your dollars and your energy into social media trying to reach them is a really smart choice,” he says.

Brewer says whether those social media ads can actually convince someone to vote for or against a candidate is a subject of study in both the academic and business worlds. But he says it’s clear that they do have an effect with some voters.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.