NEW in the Mayoral Matrix: “Do you favor Mayor Bloomberg’s five-borough taxi plan?”
There’s a newcomer in this mayoral race and it could stir trouble: Facebook.
As voters all over the city are bracing for the incoming blitz of TV ads, the scramble for Facebook advertising is going largely unnoticed.
Yet, campaign records show that some candidates are vying to pound their message on registered voters among the website’s millions of users in New York City.
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg
Photo: AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
Democratic candidates for mayor Sal Albanese, Adolfo Carrion and GOP candidate John Catsmatidis have been most aggressive in buying the ads on Facebook, according to campaign finance records.
Albanese has shelled out about $7,000 so far for the ads, while Carrion and Catsimatidis have paid $6,000 and $4,300 respectively. (According to the Facebook online ad generator, it costs a minimum of $21.29 a day to run a Facebook ad that targets users 18 or older living in New York City.)
That might not sound like game-changing dollars, but it accounts for about five percent of the funds the first two candidates have raised. Catsimatidis is largely self-funded.
Spending on Facebook ads could be these candidates’ best shot at breaking through the advertising clutter.
City Comptroller candidate Scott Stringer is rumored to have recently spent $2.2 million worth of television airtime, and mayoral candidates are expected to spend heavily as well.
In those circumstances, the six-figure funds that the outlier candidates have each mustered puts them at a disadvantage that they can try to remedy with the social networks ads, which have the advantage of targeting users according to demographic data like gender, age and geography.
“It’s a low-cost way to reach voters who might be receptive to your message if you don’t have the budget to flood airwaves,” Democratic political strategist Dan Gerstein said.
The expenditures of Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn, as well as those of GOP contenders Joe Lhota and George McDonald also show that they’ve footed bills ranging between $100 and $680 each for Facebook ads.
Other campaigns could not be reached or declined to say whether they buy ads from the social media network, but Gerstein said he was “sure they’re all doing it.”
No candidate in the 2009 mayoral race reported spending for Facebook ads – though that might be because the bigger campaigns tend to hire marketing firms to take charge of their advertising.
The jury is still out on whether voters respond to Facebook ads – though there’s little doubt they draw a more welcome response than robocalls.
If you see a mayoral race ad pop up on Facebook, let us know what is says by tweeting it with #facebookadsblitz.
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