New data show the NRA increased online ad spending aggressively after Parkland shooting
The NRA sure has lots of money to toss around.
New data show the NRA increased online ad spending aggresively after Parkland shooting
Immediately after the horror of the February 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the National Rifle Association halted all of its digital advertising, including ads on YouTube, banner ads on websites, and Facebook ads.
Within four days, though, the NRA had returned in force, increasing its advertising aggressively on Facebook, and spending so widely and indiscriminately that its ads on YouTube showed up on videos for school-age kids. According to a previously unpublished review by Pathmatics, a company that scrapes data from online ads, the NRA spent more than six times as much on digital ads after the Parkland shooting than it did in the weeks before it. Its average daily spending in the 24 days before Parkland was $11,300, according to Pathmatics. In the 24 days after its silent period, that average jumped to $47,300.
.................................
Nearly all of the increase was on social media, primarily Facebook, where the NRA took its spending from an average of $4,400 a day in the three weeks prior to Parkland to $34,000 a day in the three weeks after the silence. Florida was heavily targeted in the post-tragedy ad burst. The state went from ninth most targeted in January to third between mid-February and mid-March.
...............................
In its sudden rush to counteract widespread criticism, which will reach a crescendo in Saturday’s national March For Our Lives anti-gun protest, the NRA appears to have aimed its marketing messages rather carelessly. Pathmatics found NRA membership-drive ads running on a YouTube channel for grade schoolers called Kids’ Toys. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment.
Survivors of Florida school shooting are building a social movement to endure
.............................
“From an advertising perspective, it’s interesting because this event energized the NRA’s base. But from the tone-deafness of the response, I’m very surprised,” said Pathmatics CEO Gabriel Gottlieb.
Going dark after a gun-related tragedy is a common tactic for the NRA, and a practice that seems to have started around the time of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on December 2012. After the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 59 people dead, the NRA delayed a $32,000 political ad purchase for 10 days.
But the NRA’s radio silence would almost always end once the public’s clamoring for stricter gun control laws inevitably died down, said Michael Franz, a professor of government and legal affairs at Bowdoin College in Maine. Franz co-directs the Wesleyan Media Project, which has tracked the NRA’s television and radio advertising. “This one is a little different because you have more sustained discussion.”
Franz said he finds it bizarre that the NRA would advertise to kids on toy video channels – but it could be as simple as the organization aiming its spending at the most popular YouTube channels to spread its message about membership...........................
Case in point, .....................
The Federal Communications Commission has long enforced strict rules about how network and cable television channels can advertise to kids. But few, if any, of those rules are in force with online video ads...........................
As the primary gun market of white males continues to age, the NRA has been reaching out to kids and teens.................................
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5ab554ed/turbine/ct-1521833193-q25xcbqjn4-snap-image/750/750x422
= new reply since forum marked as read
