Romney and Obama Campaigns Leaking Web Site Visitor Data
The presidential campaign sites BarackObama.com and MittRomney.com have recently ratcheted up their use of third-party Web trackers. These are companies, like ad networks and data brokers working on behalf of the campaigns …
Context & Ripple Effects
Both campaigns had already treated the web as a core campaigning channel: Romney entered web ad buying in 2007, while Obama had concentrated digital spending on Google advertising and tested Tumblr outreach for 2012. The expanded use of third-party trackers extends that digital strategy from buying attention and publishing messages to sharing site-visitor data with outside ad and data firms.
The story matters because BarackObama.com and MittRomney.com are not merely campaign-controlled destinations when trackers are embedded; visitor activity also becomes available to the vendors operating those tools.
First-order effects
- Visitors to BarackObama.com and MittRomney.com have data exposed to the third-party tracking companies embedded on the sites.
- Obama and Romney campaigns gain access to ad-tech and data-broker services while giving those vendors a role in handling supporter and voter-site data.
Second-order effects
- Ad networks and data brokers working for the campaigns gain a richer signal from campaign-site visits, strengthening the link between campaign web operations and outside targeting infrastructure.
- The campaigns’ earlier investment in web advertising becomes more dependent on vendors’ data-handling practices, rather than on the privacy choices of the campaign sites alone.
Third-order effects
- If major campaigns normalize tracker-heavy sites, political digital operations will increasingly be shaped by the disclosure, control, and accountability rules of the ad-tech intermediaries they use.
- The episode points toward privacy becoming a constraint on campaign technology strategy, not only a question of message distribution and online reach.
The trend: Political campaigns are evolving from using the web for advertising and publishing into data-driven operations mediated by third-party tracking and targeting vendors.