It's very interesting to see some concrete numbers on political marketing, and while I don't doubt the author's number, I find his conclusion over-ambitious. -

It's very interesting to see some concrete numbers on political marketing, and while I don't doubt the author's number, I find his conclusion over-ambitious. - The author finds that the click-through rate (20%) is much higher than the rate he typically sees in his career --> This is evidence of people being mad about Betsy Devos, and doesn't necessarily say anything about how easy it is to influence people through ads. - The hardest part is to get people to go from watching a video to physically pick up the phone. The author doesn't (and can't) track this part, so can't prove his ads' true effectiveness. He "conservatively" estimates that his ads' audience make up half of the 1400 calls to the North Dakota senator. For this to be true, the conversion rate from video to physical phone call has to be 70% [1]. I'm not convinced it's this high. Indeed, if it's so easy to convince people to actually pick up the phone, a school district or a church can get the hundreds of parents and church-goers in a day. [1] 996 North Dakotans watched the ads. The conversion rate needs to be 700 / 996 ~ 70% for his audience to make up half of the 1400 calls to the senator.