Congressional District Targeting

Election season is in full swing in preparation for November, and politicians are pulling out all of the stops. No matter what party line you may follow, we can all agree Americans are bombarded with campaign ads and political information. It may be hard for voters to distinguish which local candidates fall within their congressional districts and, as a result, deter voters from placing their ballots in the fall. Google is introducing a new geographical feature to help voters make their big decisions in the voting booths.

This geographical feature will do more than identify the red and blue states. Starting this month, Google is rolling out Congressional District Targeting for Google AdWords, enabling users to target their ads to specific Congressional districts as opposed to zip codes. Politicians will be able to spend their campaign dollars more wisely while serving ads to their voters in their respective districts. Long gone are the old methods of targeting entire zip codes.

Every ten years with new census information, the redistricting process takes place and creates new boundaries allowing for new voters. Many will take new shape as seen in the map below.

As shown by this map, districts can span across multiple zip codes therefore forcing the old zip code method to be obsolete. With Congressional District Targeting, candidates can easily enter their district number, create ads, precisely target their voters, and effectively spend ad dollars to gain their support. Google hopes to help all political campaigns take advantage of the web, and the Google tools they provide to run successful campaigns.

Google is also providing users with another tool for the elections. Their Four Screens to Victory politics and elections ads toolkit site also aims to help users effectively reach voters. On their web site Google says:

Voters use an average of 14.7 sources of information to help make their candidate selection and are connected to multiple devices throughout the day (Google/Shopper Sciences, 2011). Whether your goal is a seat on the town council, building up support for your chosen issue, or the White House, integrated marketing efforts must engage voters across four screens: television, computers, tablets and mobile phones.

Google believes that integration and precise targeting will be most effective for campaigners as well as voters. Voters will no longer have to deal with political ads that do not pertain to them, and will only be served ads that are relevant to them. Voters will receive less clutter, and will be able to access information on all devices they use.

Congressional District Targeting is another way Google hopes to build better relationships between users and advertisers.