Since Abraham Lincoln admonished his fellow Whig Party members in 1840 “to make a perfect list of all the voters in their respective districts, and to ascertain with certainty for whom they will vote,” political campaigns in the United States have relied on accurate voter data to educate citizens on key issues, persuade the undecided, and mobilize their supporters.
The advent of sophisticated, up-to-the-minute location data from smartphones, which is always made available with a user’s explicit consent, has vastly increased campaigns’ capacity to target the right voters with the right messages. Political advertisers are not alone in relying on this geolocation data generated by a users’ smartphone. In the U.S. this year, marketers are estimated to spend more than $32 billion on location targeted mobile advertising.
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