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<p>As part of its work to encourage people to register to vote, the Electoral Commission
runs multi-media advertising campaigns before electoral events. Its most recent campaign
led up to the voter registration deadline ahead of the Northern Ireland Assembly election
scheduled for Thursday 2 March.</p><p>Online advertising is one of several channels
used by the Commission and includes a number of elements, including ‘display’ advertising,
whereby the Commission’s voter registration advertising appears on a wide range of
websites, including various news media outlets, which voters are likely to visit for
information on elections or about political interests. In order to achieve a breadth
of coverage, the Commission often use the Google Display Network (GDN) which is a
system run by Google that enables advertisers to place online banner ads across a
wide range of news, blogs and other websites, and is a commonly used method for publicly-funded
campaigns. They brief media buying agencies to purchase space on the GDN based on
the audiences they want to reach. The algorithms that sit behind the GDN will automatically
identify the most appropriate websites for ads to appear on, based on the audience
visiting those sites. This is a cost-effective way to purchase advertising space and
to ensure that a diversity of voters see messages multiple times – ads for the campaign
in Northern Ireland appeared on more than 5,000 websites.</p><p>Historical data on
individual website spending for all previous campaigns within the last three years
is not held by the Commission. However, the Commission can confirm that as part of
the recent campaign in Northern Ireland, the Commission’s spend relating to Breitbart
News totals £19.51. This equates to 0.7% of the Commission’s overall advertising spend
with the GDN in that campaign, and a total media budget for the campaign of £140,000
which included TV, press, billboard, radio and social media advertising.</p>
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