When Rob Saliterman (MBA 2011) started selling online political ads at Google, they were almost all destined for people already seeking political content, placed either on specific networks or in response to user searches. Over nearly four years at the search giant, Saliterman—a 33-year-old veteran of the Bush White House and Republican National Committee—promoted new tools that permitted campaigns to run ads for a select group of voters before YouTube videos. After moving to launch Snapchat’s first political advertising sales team this past spring, Saliterman returned to many of his former clients with a pitch for an entirely different type of online opportunity: a place to show campaign ads to people who probably don’t expect to ever see them.

After a stint at the Treasury Department during the 2008 financial crisis, Saliterman attended HBS with the goal of marrying his political experience with greater financial acumen. Instead he has found himself in the midst of the most promising expansion of the political business itself: technological shifts that permit campaign advertisers to broaden their view of the Internet, from merely a venue for engaging supporters to donate and volunteer to one where they can persuade undecided voters.

At Snapchat, the mobile app known for its ephemeral messaging, prospective targets are likely to be much younger than those who can be reached elsewhere on the Internet. Campaigns willing to experiment—the environmental group NextGen Climate and Ohio Governor John Kasich’s GOP presidential campaign were among the first—are pioneers in an entirely new format. They are learning to script ads that are 10 seconds long instead of 30 and forced to flip them to fill the vertical format Snapchat has optimized for a cell-phone screen. “One way that 2016 will be different from 2012 is campaigns and super PACs will devote more resources to content production for digital,” says Saliterman.

While most digital-first politicos trash the passive nature of broadcast TV and radio as anachronistic, Saliterman is more subtle in the contrasts he draws with the medium that still commands the bulk of campaign budgets—which, in the case of the upcoming presidential election, are estimated to swell to a combined $5 billion. Unlike on YouTube, where ads run before the main attraction like a movie trailer, Snapchat interrupts content for short, interstitial spots—which Saliterman argues makes them harder for viewers to ignore. “In some ways, Snapchat is more like TV for reaching an 18- to 35-year-old audience,” he says. “They’re commanding someone’s entire attention.”

Post a Comment