Help Drain the GOP’s Resources By Clicking on Every Trump Ad You See
Only because you can’t swat digital advertisements away like disease-spreading parasites, the natural reaction to seeing a Trump ad is to just keep scrolling. But if you want to help reduce his ability to buy more ads in the future, or just troll his campaign people, the best thing you can do is click on them.
And not just click on them. Engage with them. Deeply. Passionately.
Here’s why.
Donald Trump has to pay every time someone clicks on an ad
When an advertiser run ads on Google, or Facebook, or anywhere else on the internet, they pay for clicks. Depending on where you are on the internet and what you’re searching for, those clicks can be very expensive.
But advertisers also pay for “impressions.” Google defines an impression as each time an ad is shown in their ad network. The company has several different types of ads in their network. The most common Google Ads you’ll see (and the ones for which we have the most data) are display and search ads.
Display ads are probably the most common. They’re the ones you see popping up in little boxes all over the internet. Those ads cost, on average, $0.81 per click. These can “ad” (sorry) up pretty quickly.
Search ads are the top few results you see above the “real” results. They’re marked “Ad” next to the link. Those hurt the Trump campaign’s wallet at an average of $6.35 per click.
However, Google (and social media portals) also charges advertisers for cost-per-action (CPA). This is when you click on an ad and then take a pre-defined action, such as signing up for a mailing list. While the all-industry average is $56.11 for search and $90.80 for display ads, the average CPA for political campaigns is well over $100. Holy shit!
If you want to fuck with the Trump campaign’s money, click on an ad and then follow through the website and sign up for an email address. Use a burner. Repeat.
But wait, there’s more.
Clicking on Trump ads fucks with the campaign’s ability to target the people he needs to reach
When advertisers use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, they are hoping to establish a “marketing funnel.” The idea is that you cast a wide net to catch people with even a passing interest in something. After that, you “re-market” with more specific content to identify who is more interested, and so on.
The goal being to identify people who want your product so you can deliver hot, fresh loads of ads for products and services right to their faces.
So, when you click on an ad you get thrown into the marketing funnel for Trump’s campaign. That means that they’ll start sending you more ads, which can be even more expensive for you to click on the further down the funnel you go.
If you make melonballer420x69@aol.com look, to the digital advertising robots, like a Trump superfan, their campaign’s automated targeting will spend more money to keep sending you more content. Even if you don’t click on them, they still have to pay for those impressions.
A competent digital marketing might be able to identify efforts like this, but it would be hard to find anyone you could reasonably label as “competent” left in Trump’s team. You could put good money everything being set to automate.
Fight misinformation with misinformation
When you reduce any business’ ability to reach its desired customers, you fuck with its entire business model. Considering the GOP’s unwillingness to secure our elections and willingness to benefit from massive disinformation campaigns, this could be a particularly effective counter-measure.
This is particularly true if you live in a swing state, where digital ads will be more expensive and more important to the campaigns.
There are reports that Trump’s record-breaking war chest is quickly dwindling. While it’d be a fool who doesn’t think they have some trick up their sleeve, an organized effort to drain the Trump campaign’s resources could significantly reduce its ability to accomplish its marketing goals.
That could help prevent it from accomplishing its much bigger goals.
