Tracking Voters’ Clicks Online to Try to Sway Them

Then, as he visited other Web sites, he started seeing advertisements asking him to donate to Mitt Romney’s campaign. One mentioned family values, he said, and seemed aimed at someone with more conservative leanings.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Goddard said. “I’m the opposite of a Romney supporter. But ever since I went to the Romney site, they’ve been following me.”

One of the hallmarks of this campaign is the use of increasingly sophisticated — but not always accurate — data-mining techniques to customize ads for voters based on the digital trails they leave as they visit Internet sites.

It is a practice pioneered by online retailers who work with third-party information resellers to create detailed portraits of consumers, all the better to show them relevant marketing pitches. Mr. Goddard, for example, may have received those Romney ads because of “retargeting” software designed to show people ads for certain sites or products they have previously viewed.

Now, in the election’s final weeks, both presidential campaigns have drastically increased their use of such third-party surveillance engines, according to Evidon, a company that helps businesses and consumers monitor and control third-party tracking software.

Over the month of September, Evidon identified 76 different tracking programs on barackobama.com — two more trackers than it found on Best Buy’s Web site — compared with 53 in May. It found 40 different trackers on mittromney.com last month, compared with 25 in May.

The report provides a rare glimpse into the number of third-party tracking programs that are operating on the campaign Web sites — as many as or more than on some of the most popular retailers’ sites.

The campaigns directly hire some companies, like ad agencies or data management firms, that marry information collected about voters on a campaign site with data about them from other sources. But these entities, in turn, may bring their own software partners to the sites to perform data-mining activities like retargeting voters or tracking the political links they share with their social networks.

Now some consumer advocates say the proliferation of these trackers raises the risk that information about millions of people’s political beliefs could spread to dozens of business-to-business companies whose names many voters have never even heard. There is growing concern that the campaigns or third-party trackers may later use that voter data for purposes the public never imagined, like excluding someone from a job offer based on his or her past political affiliations.

“Is the data going to be sold to marketers or shared with other campaigns?” said Christopher Calabrese, the legislative counsel for privacy-related issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. “We simply don’t know how this information is going to be used in the future and where it is going to end up.”

Evidon offers a free software program called Ghostery that people can use to identify third-party trackers on the sites they visit. On Oct. 18 the program identified 19 different trackers on the Obama Web site and 12 on the Romney site. A reporter contacted 10 for comment.

Among those who responded, Cassie Piercey, a spokeswoman for ValueClick, whose MediaPlex marketing analytics division was identified as operating on the Obama site by Ghostery, said she could not comment on specific clients and referred a reporter to the company’s privacy policy. The policy says that ValueClick may collect information about users — like their Internet Protocol addresses, Web browsing histories, online purchases and searches — that does not involve identifiable information like their names, and that the company may share that data with its clients and marketing partners.

Adam Berke, the president of AdRoll, an advertising and retargeting company identified by Evidon on the Obama site, said the company did not aggregate user data or share it with other clients.

Meanwhile, Nanda Kishore, the chief technology officer of ShareThis, a service found on the Romney site by Ghostery that collects information about the links visitors share with their social networks, said the company collects only “anonymous” information about users and does not share or sell it.

The privacy policies on the campaigns’ Web sites acknowledge that they work with third parties that may collect user data.

Evidon executives said the tracking companies on the campaign sites included services that collect details about people’s online behavior in order to help mold ads to their political concerns; advertising networks that track people’s browsing history to measure the effectiveness of ads; and companies that record user behavior so they can analyze the effectiveness of sites to attract and hold on to Web traffic.

Officials with both campaigns emphasize that such data collection is “anonymous” because third-party companies use code numbers, not real names, to track site visitors.

Campaigns Use Social Media to Lure In Younger Voters

If the presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social media like Facebook and Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end. They are taking to fields of online battle that might seem obscure to the non-Internet-obsessed — sharing song playlists on Spotify, adding frosted pumpkin bread recipes to Pinterest and posting the candidates’ moments at home with the children on Instagram.

At stake, the campaigns say they believe, are votes from citizens, particularly younger ones, who may not watch television or read the paper but spend plenty of time on the social Web. The campaigns want to inject themselves into the conversation on services like Tumblr, where political dialogue often takes the form of remixed photos and quirky videos.

To remind Tumblr users about the first presidential debate on Wednesday, Mr. Obama’s team used an obscure clip of Lindsay Lohan saying “It’s October 3” in the comedy “Mean Girls.” And on Twitter, Mitt Romney’s bodyguard posted a picture of the candidate’s family playing Jenga before the debate.

The techniques may be relatively new, but they are based on some old-fashioned political principles, according to Zachary Moffatt, the digital director for the Romney campaign.

“The more people you talk to, the more likely you are to win,” said Mr. Moffatt, who oversees about 120 staff members and volunteers. “The more people who interact with Mitt, the more likely he is to win. Social extends and amplifies that.”

But as is the way of the Web, a well-intended post or picture on social networks can quickly morph into a disaster. And the slightest gaffe on the campaign trail can become a “Groundhog Day” moment, repeated endlessly.

“Even a typo is a big deal,” Mr. Moffatt said.

In July, when Mr. Obama told a crowd of supporters “You didn’t build that” while talking about the importance of public infrastructure, the Romney campaign pounced, uploading photos of hot-dog-joint owners and others displaying signs with variations on the slogan “I built this.”

And Clint Eastwood’s mock interview with the president at the Republican convention sent the Web into a frenzy. Within minutes, images of Mr. Eastwood on stage, plastered with cutting captions, hit Tumblr, and Twitter was flooded with parodies. Mr. Obama’s team joined in, sharing on Twitter a photo of him in a chair marked “The President,” with the caption, “This seat’s taken.”

That retort is in line with the overall social media presence of the Obama campaign, which tends to be sharper and more attitude-laden than the Republican efforts, particularly on Tumblr. The morning after the debate, the Obama Tumblr followed up on Mr. Romney’s reference to cutting financing for PBS by posting something that was circulating on Twitter: a picture of Big Bird from Sesame Street with the caption “Mitt Romney’s Plan to Cut the Deficit: Fire This Guy.” (Laura Olin, who previously worked at a digital strategy agency, helps lend a savvy tone to the campaign’s Tumblr efforts.)

Both camps tend to rely heavily on photos, slogans and the like that have been generated by their supporters. The Obama team, in particular, is fond of posting GIFs, or short looping video clips, that have been made by others. These might show the president high-fiving children or hugging his wife and daughters. Other clips poke fun at rivals or give knowing nods to hip television shows like “Parks and Recreation.”

At times the campaign’s freer-wheeling tone can get it into trouble: an image it shared on Tumblr that urged followers to “vote like your lady parts depend on it” drew criticism from conservative bloggers and others who thought it was in poor taste. The campaign quickly took down the image, saying it had not been properly vetted.

Those who keep up with the Obama campaign on Tumblr seem to approve of the approach — with some posts attracting close to 70,000 “notes,” or likes and reposts from users.

“It’s about authentic, two-way communication,” said Adam Fetcher, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. “Social media is a natural extension of our massive grass-roots organization.”

By comparison, the Romney campaign’s presence on Tumblr is more subdued, sticking largely to posterlike photos with slogans like “No, we can’t.” Its posts rarely get more than 400 responses.

Both campaigns have teams of Internet-adept staff members who try to coordinate their strategy and message across many social sites. They declined to specify how this works, saying they did not want to tip off the competition. But both rely heavily on Facebook and Twitter to solicit donations, blast out reminders of events and share articles and videos conveying their stances.

Flickr and Instagram serve as scrapbooks from the campaign trail, showing the candidates trying the pie at small-town restaurants. On Tumblr and Pinterest, the campaigns often highlight photos and other material from supporters.

As important as the campaigns say these efforts are, the candidates themselves are not actually doing the posting. But sometimes their wives are. While Mr. Romney has a campaign-run Pinterest board, his wife, Ann, has her own, showcasing her favorite crafts projects and books. When Michelle Obama posts a message on Twitter or shares an image on the campaign’s Pinterest board, her posts bear her initials — “mo” — so they stand out among those generated by campaign staff.

Twitter and Facebook are still the biggest avenues for online canvassing, with their broad demographic reach and user numbers that have grown tenfold from four years ago. It may be hard to fathom what posting video clips or music playlists on less mainstream sites has to do with the election. Does it really matter to voters if Mr. Obama has Stevie Wonder on his list, while Mr. Romney prefers Johnny Cash?

Though the returns on such efforts are not easily quantifiable, neither party is taking any chances.

“What’s the return on putting your pants on in the morning? We don’t know,” said Jan Rezab, the chief executive of Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm. “But we just know it’s bad if you don’t do it.”

Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley, pointed to another motivation for such seemingly trivial online updates.

“It is important for people to know whether or not a huge political figure shares the same taste as me,” said Dr. Cheshire, who studies behavior and trust online. “And creating a playlist on Spotify is part of what makes them seem more human.”

Advertising: Survey Shows Voters Are Wary of Tailored Political Ads

The results of a new study to be released on Tuesday by professors at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania show that 86 percent of respondents did not want political campaigns to tailor ads to their interests.

The results of the study come at a time when national and local political campaigns are steadily increasing their use of technology that traditional marketers use to tailor advertising.

For political campaigns, the process is called microtargeting. Information about voters — like the charitable donations they make, the type of credit card they use and the Congressional district they live in — is combined with voter registration records, and the result allows campaigns to send certain types of messages to voters.

For example, one person may see an ad that focuses on a candidate’s employment message while another will see an ad about reproductive rights. Both presidential campaigns use some form of microtargeting.

“The overall sense is that there is a real discontent about this,” said Prof. Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School. “You have a real disjuncture between the American public and the campaigns that are on a trajectory to increase it.”

It is not just discontent with the ads themselves that should concern politicians. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 64 percent, said the likelihood of their voting for a candidate would decrease if that candidate purchased information about them and their neighbors for the purpose of sending them different messages.

The study was conducted this year by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 23 to May 6. It included cellphone and landline telephone interviews in English and Spanish with 1,503 adult Internet users in the continental United States.

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The survey also examined attitudes toward political advertising on social media sites like Facebook. Seventy percent of respondents said the likelihood of their voting for a candidate they supported would decrease if the campaign used Facebook to send ads to the friends of someone who had “liked” a candidate’s Facebook page.

“People take politics seriously,” Professor Turow said. “Even more seriously than advertising, discounts and news.”

In 2009, Professor Turow, with other professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a study that examined attitudes toward similar types of advertising used by traditional marketers. They found that about two-thirds of respondents objected to having their activities tracked online with the goal of sending them ads tailored to their interests.

Since then, the issue of online tracking in digital advertising has risen to the national stage. Industry groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau, government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission, the Commerce Department and the White House, and privacy advocates have agreed to work together to satisfy both advertisers and users concerned about Internet privacy.

In March, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on Internet privacy that called on Congress to enact legislation regulating companies known as data brokers, which collect and sell personal information to advertisers.

The commission also urged that technology companies offer a “Do Not Track” mechanism by the end of the year that would allow users to opt out of having their personal information collected online.

“Compliance with Do Not Track would be voluntary, so each entity, whether political or commercial, would make its own decision about whether to comply,” Ed Felten, chief technologist at the commission, said in an e-mail.

A handful of personal interviews conducted with survey respondents showed mixed feelings about tailored political ads, and the collection and use of personal data.

Roman Kickirillo, 42, an engineer in Franklin, Tenn., described his attitude toward online advertising of all types as “total indifference.” Mr. Kickirillo said he would only be bothered by ads tailored to his specific political interests if the candidate’s messages were contradictory.

“I might never find out that they were saying the opposite because they think that’s exactly what I want to hear,” he said.

Doug Sheaff, 77, a retiree who lives in Bristol, Va., said he would be concerned with how data was collected. “As long as it’s publicly accessible information that they are getting and they are able to tailor the message, I have no problem,” Mr. Sheaff said. “The other question is, are they building up a file on me.”

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Carol Stewart, 49, who lives in New Boston, Tex., and is unemployed after getting “caught up in the economic crisis,” said she notices advertising of all types in e-mails, on Web sites and on the right-hand column of Facebook pages.

“You visit the site and they know everything about you,” Ms. Stewart said. “I don’t like that.” Ms. Stewart, who said she considers herself a Democrat, recalls seeing ads online for Mitt Romney but not for Barack Obama but that she has not clicked on the ads.

“When I got the discount card at the grocery store I knew they were going to track my habits,” Ms. Stewart said. “But these politicians out here? I didn’t agree to let them into my life.”