Thread by @RobertCPalmer13

Dominic Cummings relied heavily 'conversion rates' to shake-up the establisment & hijack our democracy.

Here's a breakdown of how he used them to manipulate a significant percentage of the British public to win the 2016 ref.

#PeoplesVote #RevokeArticle50

1.

The 'conversion rate' (CR) is the proportion of the online audience that clicks on an online ad. It is commonly accepted that CRs are approx. 10% of the ppl who see a political ad. The idea is to get ppl to the 'landing page' (the site to which that ads are directed).

2.

Once on the landing page, 10% will believe the messages on it are factual. 10% of that number is persuaded to do something based on the messages they have been directed to, and now believe to be true.

3.

IOW - a 'reach' of 10K ppl equates to a CR of 1K from which 100 ppl become believers; an additional 10 ppl will be persuaded to donate, volunteer, or take some other action for the cause. These CRs then enable a campaign chief to create an ‘astroturf’ movement.

4.

'An ‘astroturf’ campaign strategy is defined as the process of seeking electoral or political victory by creating and mobilizing artificial grievances and political demand, and it is designed to create the image of public consensus, where there is none'. Sounds familiar?!

5.

This was part of the 3 step 'onboarding' process adopted by Cummings, where after ppl were taken to the landing page (step 1), invited to supply personal details to populate VLs database (step 2) & finally invited to engage in the campaign to create organic growth w/out cost.

6.

As with everything else, Cummings manipulated the CR phenomenon with unnerving expertise. In Tim Shipman's book (All Out War) he states that VL (Cummings) aimed for a 30% CR from its ads & a 50% CR with the messaging that ppl would receive on its website’s landing pages.

7.

Shipman & Prof Howard (Oxford) state that VL achieved these target
CRs via intense repetition of their ads & online political messaging. Ads & messages were monitored, those that failed to convince enough readers were re-worked/changed until a success threshold achieved.

8.

By slightly adapting industry methods, VL attained a much higher CR than normal. Instead of a 10K reach attaining a 1K CR, VL got 3K to the landing site, where around 1.5K provided their personal data for its database. Numbers recruited to the astroturf campaign are unknown.

9.

By manipulating the conversion rate, Cummings created an extremely effective digital campaign. Some say that was ingenuity BUT we must remember between 20-30% of ppl make-up their minds in the last week of campaigning - in this case, when the illegal overspending occured.

10.