Ask HN: So how bout those Donald trump YouTube ads? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: So how bout those Donald trump YouTube ads?

Why does alphabet choose to run them, plastered over the front page of youtube?

I think it's just about money. You pay and get what you pay for.

Maybe they want to be on the winning side this time (just joking). My guess is that the trump campaign is spending on ads on YouTube, while the Biden campaign isn't. There seems to be a lot of mashups and videos comparing statements of Biden now and years ago. I get the impression the general tone of most of the videos on YouTube are negative for Biden, and probably not the best place to spend ad money. Especially considering that YouTube will start recommending political videos trying to get click rage engagement going on.

I made the mistake during the last election clicking on a promoted video about Hillary and my god I had to spend weeks clicking "don't recommend this channel" in my feed. YouTube will shove political video recommendation down your throat. I don't like political commentary regardless of what side of the ideological spectrum it comes from.

They were on the winning side last time too. Got investigated by Congress and testified on C-SPAN and everything.

I'm actually very curious about this too. I dont often view political content on YouTube or really other sites (although I do discuss it a good bit on various sites and chat applications), yet whenever I open the YouTube app I my phone, there's a Trump ad pinned to the top or one before a video. All other ads are closer related to my actual search history.

For comparison other streaming apps I use tend to show me a mix of Trump/Biden ads, but YouTube seems to show exclusively Trump ones.

There is an obvious reason: Donald Trump paid more money than anyone else in the history of youtube advertising, and so his ads win all the bids and show up in all the places. But it's just been so long now, that they would have been able to catch it and end it, if they really cared. Just figure out where the money enters the system, and block it. If it's more complicated than suspending a single campaign worker's account, then that's newsworthy and should be reported on.

The second explanation is that alphabet is now a card-carrying member of the republican party, and REALLLY wants donald trump to win the next election.

Not an exhaustive list, just trying to brainstorm here.

It’s a great strategy.

My assumption is that Trumps team is attempting to leverage the laxness of YouTube’s platform because of the negative attention and increased scrutiny that Facebook has been under.

They are outspending on a platform that will not correct or proof their messaging.

Trump’s digital team is extremely good at optimizing for conversions in a way that Obama’s team was as well.

Trump’s team uses plain English with simple call-to-actions focused on emotion such as FEAR. Dems language is much more convoluted and some would say elitist.

It remains to be seen whether stoking FEAR is as powerful a tool as HOPE is which to a certain degree is the commonality between their past campaigns:

* Obama was hope for a better future

* Trump’s first campaign was hope for a return to “values” of the past

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