HillaryClinton.com Geotargets Indiana
by Patrick Ruffini :: April 3rd, 2008 10:16 pmToday, when hooked up to an in-store wifi network, I happened upon something pretty interesting: the HillaryClinton.com homepage was geared almost exclusively to the state of Indiana, with no less than four prominent mentions above the fold.
Thinking it unlikely that she had suddenly given up on Pennsylvania, I began to suspect some sort of geotargeting and asked the flock on Twitter what they saw on Hillary’s site. A resident of Indiana said he saw the above Indiana page. But Sean Hackbarth, a fellow D.C. area resident, reported what appears to be their default national homepage, with mentions of Michigan+Florida and Pennsylvania. When I returned home, I saw the same:
(Twitter user Xavierla also blogged about IP testing in Ohio in the runup to the March 4th primary.)
Mind you, I’m nowhere near Indiana. I was in suburban Virginia at the time. The wifi provider appears to be out in California, said a geo IP search said Rockville, Maryland. But for some reason, it thought I was in Indiana, or close by. This is the first time I’ve personally experienced a political site IP address targeting by location.
Are you in Pennsylvania? Or Indiana? Or North Carolina? Or Oregon? What are you seeing on Hillary’s site — or Obama’s? Or are you close by? In Illinois, or Washington state maybe? Is it different than the national than the national site? Leave your report in the comments, and screencap it if it’s different.
Given the highly concentrated campaign unfolding in the upcoming primary states, it’s smart to tailor your message to that state. IP geocoding makes it possible, even if the targeting is a little rough around the edges.
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I am in Indiana and I get the default national page.
Could you spoof different IP addresses in order to try and trigger the site to geotarget you?
In Oregon this morning the page Pennsylvania-centric. Bill’s visited, Chelsea is coming, and Hillary herself is here this weekend. But no Oregon presence on her site. I’ll send you the screen grab.
Tracy’s right — Mahoney beat the Clinton campaign to it by about 6 months.
That site was my firm’s first foray into political new-media. In our naivete, we assumed our more established competitors HAD to have been doing this for years.
I mean, the technology isn’t new and direct-mail/traditional media firms have been micro-targeting copy since Richard Viguerie’s heyday…
We actually had no idea that we’d pioneered anything until we started advertising it on one of our websites. You can read more about how campaigns can (and should) use this technology at:
[…] Patrick Ruffini yesterday noticed something strange when he happened to log into Hillary Clinton’s campaign site from an in-store WiFi location (yes, stranger than a Republican pundit and strategist frequenting Hillary’s campaign website while at a commercial WiFi hotspot). When he logged in he noticed, curiously, that the prominent images and headlines on the site implored him to “Help Hillary Win Indiana,” which was curious since he was in a suburban Virginia location at the time. […]
[…] Patrick Ruffini yesterday noticed something strange when he happened to log into Hillary Clinton’s campaign site from an in-store WiFi location (yes, stranger than a Republican pundit and strategist frequenting Hillary’s campaign website while at a commercial WiFi hotspot). When he logged in he noticed, curiously, that the prominent images and headlines on the site implored him to “Help Hillary Win Indiana,” which was curious since he was in a suburban Virginia location at the time. […]
[…] Patrick Ruffini yesterday noticed something strange when he happened to log into Hillary Clinton’s campaign site from an in-store WiFi location (yes, stranger than a Republican pundit and strategist frequenting Hillary’s campaign website while at a commercial WiFi hotspot). When he logged in he noticed, curiously, that the prominent images and headlines on the site implored him to “Help Hillary Win Indiana,” which was curious since he was in a suburban Virginia location at the time. […]