Election Ads on Facebook may not be so effective

As the presidential election is looming closer, there is a increased attention on political campaigns, ads, etc. One would imagine that Facebook would play a significant role in such political activities. There are numerous reports of grass root movements on-line to support Obama. The McCain campaign must have been paying attention too.

However, one recent election closely related to the web community has just finished: the IEEE Annual (Presidential) Election. There were two candidates competing for the IEEE presidency. I have noticed election campaign ads for one of them on Facebook. One would argue that Facebook is an interesting community, with significant proportion of educated, computer savy individuals, some of them may very well be IEEE members with voting rights. However, the IEEE candidate whose ad that I noticed on Facebook did not win the IEEE presidential election. There may be several factors involved. Many of those actively voting on this professional organization may well be outside the Facebook demographic. Nevertheless, this is one data-point showing that Facebook ad may not be so effective after all.