Nov 29, 2019
Report: 2020 campaigns want access to supporters' phone contacts
Illustration: Axios Visuals/Aïda Amer
Democratic and Republican 2020 campaigns are using apps like Team to identify potential voters from their supporters' phone contacts, the Financial Times reports.
Why it matters: As Twitter refines its ban on political ads and Google restricts audience targeting for verified political advertisers, relational organizing apps can offer campaigns a work-around to access supporters' social networks.
The big picture: These relational organizing apps rely on willing supporters volunteering their data — while other techniques, like geofencing, anonymously scrub a voters' location after they attend a rally to create targeted ads.
- How it works: Through a relational organizing app, a campaign can ask a supporter to send tailored pre-written text messages to their friends, using information the campaign has already collected and fitted to their preferences, the FT reports.
Go deeper: New way to track voters: Their smartphones