this money and what's going on in the presidential candidate al gore wars well joining me now is sasha eisenberg journalist and he wrote the book on this he's author of the victory lab which is really interesting and i'm so excited to talk to him all about it so thank you so much for being here on the show great book thanks for having me on but yeah so let's kind of take this from a bigger picture perspective because i don't cover politics i've never covered a campaign i've seen the war room though and i've seen depictions of what campaign headquarters are should be like according to my idea of them but is this a little similar to the new york stock exchange floor where trading doesn't really go on there anymore it's not the full picture well i think we look at the wrong people if we're looking at the war room where we're following the types of people end up on cable t.v. talking about the campaigns on behalf the candidates every day they serve a whole new rank of geeks who are doing. data mining what people should generically call micro targeting which is using individual level data on voters r

transition and the people that maybe can't keep up in your view maybe the press so a lot more sasha eisenberg author and journalist and still ahead i tried my hand at stand up comedy i told you about it but we'll show you some added and you can be the judge of how i did at the end of the show but first your closing market numbers . even in the years. it's never too late to start over. trying to treat her like. when a bar in the championship. or become a part. in the. north. pole. it is a secret laboratory to mccurdy was able to build a new world most sophisticated robot which all unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything turns mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and worry that this is why you should care only on the dot com. the evening he. gave. you the. police. car. welcome back we're talking about algorithmic campaigning at least that's my word for it is the transition in campaigning to using data mining and algorithmic models to then figure out who candidates are going to reach and how they're going to target them and sasha eisenberg has written a book o

. >> reporter: called microtargeting sass sasha eisenberg brighter of "the victory lap." >> you can have a different conversation with theoretically everyone on the block. >> reporter: they have to figure out what's important to you. how? data. truckloads of it. in the modern world you are leaving trails of information about yourself everywhere you go and the campaigns are buying it up. they use it to build a profile of you. say you watch "30 rock" and drink molson. that means you're probably a democrat that votes frequently. coors light and watching "ncis," odds are you are a loyal republican. >> how much is it about changing people's mines versus trying to get people who would vote for you go vote on election day? >> this is the big change in way campaigns think in the last decade. it's far less about changing people's minds and far more about modifying their behavior. >> reporter: guess what, there's's an app for that as sasha showed me. they want to knock on the doors and get out the vote, not just any doors. >> all the data they have and micro targeting algorithms and who they want

this money and what's going on in the presidential candidate al gore wars well joining me now is sasha eisenberg journalist and he wrote the book on this he's author of the victory lab which is really interesting and i'm so excited to talk to him all about it so thank you.

to then figure out who candidates are going to reach and how they're going to target them and sasha eisenberg has written a book on this he's author of victory lap and briar first late magazine so before the break one thing that i wanted to ask that i didn't get to so you talked about this evolution towards this kind of algorithmic model however does that mean that focus groups and polls and kind of the traditional things that maybe we're looking at as a consumer of media or a watcher of politics are irrelevant or they just a smaller or a different part of the pie these are different part of the pie and so different challenges internally they need to do a lot of qualitative research to figure out what types of language they lie how they should be engaging on issues and still focus groups are useful because you get a sense of what bits of language are imagery voters actually respond to and then and then the creative types on the campaign can work with that but they're also clearly artificial environments and so you can imagine the fine you get twelve people sit around the table eating sandwich

it is called micro targeting, says sasha eisenberg, the author of a new book, called "the victory lap theoretically a different conversation with every person on the block. >> reporter: to do that they have to figure out who you are and what is important to you. how do they do that? data. truckloads of it. in the modern world you are leaving trails about yourself wherever you go and the campaigns are buying it up. they use it to build a profile of you. say you watch "30 rock" and drink molsen, probably a democrat who votes. if your beer of choice is coors light, and watching "ncis," odds are you are a loyal republican. >> reporter: if you are sitting home tomorrow afternoon, and there is a knock on the door, romney or obama volunteer, they know something about you knocking on your door. >> they know a lot and made assumptions about you. >> reporter: they're not at your door by accident? >> not at all. we are way past accidents. >> reporter: which means campaign ads are popping up in the unlikeliest places, like the obama ads in video games. >> one of the variables of obama's campaign

items i thought would be interested to adjust -- the very interesting article and book out now by sasha eisenberg about the fact that the press cannot keep up with political consultants and social that parking experts. reporters basically are way behind the curve in this campaign. we think that is an interesting topic to take a look at. as well as the fact that in a wave of reporters, my impression is it looks like both candidates have succeeded for the most part in talking over the press, especially the traveling press, and making them almost irrelevant to the campaign. let us start off with amy davidson. >> can everybody hear me? i will start by addressing what he does talk about a little bit. even in the title of the panel, is this any way to cover a campaign? there is somewhat of a note of this may which i think -- dismay, which i think a lot of people feel about what the coverage has done and the campaign looks like to the media. this idea that it is going on elsewhere and reporters are missing the story. i would like to be a little more optimistic about that. i read the eisenberg article wh