The first #Aras25 ads are out

Read to the end for some good content from elsewhere, and a minor rant about the new DPC appointment.

The first presidential election ads are appearing on Meta, what do they tell us about how the campaign might unfold?

Catherine Connolly: building a base & refining a message

Catherine Connolly is running a classic message testing / recruiter engagement campaign; she has ran about 25 ads in the past few weeks, each with different hook, most running for just a day or two, with little money behind them.

This makes sense; now is the time to be working out which messages resonate with different audiences. The call to action is not around voting yet; it is to "Join the Movement" - recruiting volunteers, advocates and possibly donors.

Those messages are around Gaza, neutrality, disability, housing, her being an "independent", and her length of experience. The copy all has the same structure (problem, description, proposal, call to action), all end with a request to "Join the movement", and have the same design and simple motion graphics that look like this:

Her campaign has only spent around €630 on Meta ads since mid-August; a bargain if compared to focus groups.

Jim Gavin: content creator mode enabled

Jim Gavin's Meta ads (you can see them all here) are much more in the candidate-as-content-creator mode of modern campaigning; think optimistically scored recaps of his days at The Ploughing; or first person "meet the candidate" videos, mixing a montage of photos with straight to camera pieces at the farm yard gate.

Again the amount spent is small - about €450 according to the archive, with tons of instances of the same ad being run - a sign of audience segmentation and testing if ever I saw one.

The vibe is modern and youth focused - perhaps even Mamdani inspired (as we discussed last week). Seeking organic reach makes sense given that paid content will be gone in a few weeks, and I guess his team has decided this is the way to do that. Gavin seems to have the influencer lapel mic permanently attached in the videos, which are mostly shot in portrait format probably for TikTok / Instagram Reels.

While he is giving it a good go, it can't be an easy transition for the former senior executive of the Aviation Authority; lets see how it fairs with audiences who are not forgiving of our Millennial pauses.

Heather Humphrey: the well produced intro, an FG classic

Heather Humphreys has one ad running, but has outspent all other candidates combined at €4k in the past few weeks - possibly a sign of things to come (FG pockets tend to run deeper for elections) - but more likely a sign that there is a well laid out plan and it is being executed. No message testing here (that probably happened in focus groups).

Its a nice ad, a fairly standard high production values "meet the candidate" video. Humphreys (or "Heather", as her campaign design encourages us to call her) is spared the indignity of speaking about themself - her daughter instead is the voice we hear, sharing anecdotes that emphasise community and kitchen table.

Others

Nick Delahunty is Nick Delahunty-ing on Meta; if you want to be told what you should be angry about, you can look for yourself here.

Gareth Sheridan, who is up to two Council nominations so may actually have a chance of running, doesn't seem to be running any ads, nor do the other faces turning up in Council chambers.

If I have missed anything - do let me know!

And if you found this interesting - drop me a reply, ask a question, or use the "thumbs up / down" feature at the end.

Good content:

A former Meta lobbyist has been appointed Data Protection Commissioner

You read that right - as reported by the Irish Times (and somewhat less diplomatically by NYOB). There is a "lets wait and see" vibe among people I am speaking to about this, and OK fair, but I am really struggling with the lack of any explanation or discussion around it.

I know that US appointments that need Senate hearings can get very political, but I think that the credibility of the institution would have been strengthened if both the Minister and the appointee had had their chance to explain themselves prior to this done-and-dusted announcement, which only fuels a perception of the Irish State as being in the pocket of Big Tech.

There's an AI for that

Dublin's own Abeba Birhane - who runs the AI Accountability Lab in Trinity & you should follow if you don't - has a methodical and well argued take down of "AI for Social Good" initiatives out this week. She writes:

"Meaningful social change starts with acknowledging the root causes of existing inequities, from gender-based violence to poverty and hunger. Overcoming them requires sustained effort and significant reallocation of resources. By distracting from these realities, technosolutionism is part of the problem."

This made me think of this classic headline from the peak of the "there is an app for that" era: