A bipartisan group including some former senior White House staffers today will take its polling know-how to the Web. Sara Taylor, who worked as the political director for President George W. Bush, has brought together some unlikely bedfellows to form Resonate Networks, an advertising firm that will use data on political leanings and attitudes to help companies and interest groups sell online ads. "This is the Web 2.0 of the micro-targeting world," said Taylor, who co-founded the firm with investments from people including President Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes. "For public affairs advertisers, the micro-targeting possibilities are limitless when it comes to identifying, persuading or motivating high-quality online audiences for an issue-based or branding campaign." The firm will sift through demographic and other profile information it has gathered on its own or acquired from other marketing firms to help advertisers figure out the political leanings and attitudes of consumers they are trying to reach. Taylor worked with Bush aide Karl Rove to use similar micro-targeting techniques in the 2004 presidential campaign. She said Resonate will take those techniques a step further by using information from surveys and the tracking of online behavior to directly target consumers. It's part of a nascent field called attitudinal targeting.
