Commercial Companies in Party Networks: Digital Advertising Firms in US Elections from 2006-2016

Digital Advertising in U.S. Federal Elections, 2004-2020

“…Second, Facebook and Google play an unusual role in the market for digital advertising because they serve both parties in what is usually a partisan network of professional advice (Barrett 2021). In this role, platform companies do more than broadcast ads to users: they provide strategy and data analytics to campaigns McGregor 2018, 2019).…”

“…The centrality of Facebook and Google raises interesting questions about how two ostensibly nonpartisan platform companies influence the conduct of partisan political campaigns (Barrett 2021). Although a full answer is beyond the scope of this article, network analysis offers insight into Facebook's growing influence in U.S. elections.…”

“…The growth of digital advertising has consequences for the political consulting industry as well. Research by Barrett (2021) found that social media platforms such as Facebook and Google occupy a central role in the market for digital ads by virtue of their work on behalf of clients across the political spectrum. In this key respect, platform companies differ from typical political consulting firms that operate as part of an extended partisan network and whose staff is ideologically aligned with the clients they serve (Kolodny and Logan 1998;Koger et al 2009;Nyhan and Montgomery 2015;.…”

“…The Network of Digital Consultants RQ3 asks how platform companies like Facebook and Google fit in the partisan market for digital ads and services. We build on previous research by using a network analysis to visualize this market as a set of relationships between consulting firms with shared clients (Nyhan and Montgomery 2015;Barrett 2021). Figure 10 displays undirected networks between the top fifty firms providing digital ads to Democratic and Republican campaigns, respectively, during the last four presidential election cycles.…”

What is an online political advert? An interrogation of conceptual challenges in the formation of digital policy response

“…As online political advertising has rapidly become a feature of contemporary election campaigns, studies of usage have emerged in the United States (Barrett, 2022; Edelson et al, 2018; Ridout et al, 2021), the United Kingdom (Dommett & Bakir, 2020; Power & Mason, 2023), Canada (Bennett & Gordon, 2020), Brazil (Silva et al, 2020), Ireland (Kirk & Teeling, 2021), Germany (Medina Serrano et al, 2020), across Europe (Kruschinski & Bene, 2022), and beyond. Whilst existing research has mapped campaigns' increasing reliance on online political advertising, and raised concerns about the democratic impact of this activity (Kim et al, 2018; Zuiderveen Borgesius et al, 2018), the vast majority of scholars studying online political advertising fail to define the object of study (Coppock et al, 2020; Edelson et al, 2018; Fulgoni et al, 2016; Hager, 2019; Harker, 2020; Kim et al, 2018; Kruikemeier et al, 2016; Ridout et al, 2021; see Jaursch, 2020 for a notable exception).…”