Political

Leaked slide deck reveals how one US company targets ads for its political customers

Propublica reports:

Across the country, companies are using cookies to tailor the political ads you see online. One of the firms is CampaignGrid, which boasted in a recent slideshow, “Internet Users are No Longer Anonymous.”

The slideshow includes an image of the famous New Yorker cartoon from 1993: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Next to it, CampaignGrid lists what it can now know about an Internet user: “Lives in Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District, 19002 zip code, Registered primary voting Republican, High net worth household, Age 50-54, Teenagers in the home, Technology professional, Interested in politics, Shopping for a car, Planning a vacation in Puerto Rico.”

The slideshow was online until last week, when the company removed it after we asked for comment. (Here is theĀ full slideshow.) Rich Masterson, CampaignGrid’s chairman, wrote in an email that the slideshow was posted in error: “It was an unapproved version of a sales deck that was posted by an intern who no longer works for the company.”

I don’t have access to any other information that lets me judge that email, but I do know from what I’ve seen of other advertising firms and their services that the slideshow is a reasonable overall representation of what’s going on in the current US campaign cycle even if some details about the firm are wrong.

So the slides are well worth a read: take a look here.

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