Coming Soon To Your TV: Campaign Ads Targeted At You

NPR's Mara Liasson interviewed top Democratic ad-man Jim Margolis recently as part of her research for a story about political advertising aimed at women.

Much of the interview didn't make the final radio piece, but the picture he painted of the not-too-distant political future was fascinating — and a little unsettling.

Here are some excerpts from that interview:

Mara Liasson: If I'm a female voter living in North Carolina and the [Sen.] Kay Hagan campaign wants to reach me—how does it work?

Jim Margolis: When you log on in the morning to check the weather, there's a good chance someone is going to be talking to you right there. And depending on where you have been and what kind of websites you have been on before, there's probably a good probability that we're going to know that you are a woman. And we're going to know some of the kinds of things that interest you....education or maybe reproductive rights. And even the kind of website you are on is going to tell us a lot about who you are and the kind of things you care about because we are increasingly turning to the same kind of sites that others with similar views go to. So there you may have a pop up ad or you may have what's called pre-roll, where a little advertisement that's actually video that's running as you check that website.

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