Polit­i­cal endorse­ments are noth­ing new – from fel­low politi­cians, news­pa­pers and celebri­ties alike – but how can­di­dates and their influ­en­tial sup­port­ers cut through the prover­bial noise is chang­ing, along with our abil­i­ty to quan­ti­fy their efforts. And mar­keters uni­ver­sal­ly agree the ad land­scape will change dra­mat­i­cal­ly after the pri­maries, so we’ve only seen the tip of the 2016 polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing ice­berg to date. That’s not to say more tra­di­tion­al sources don’t car­ry weight or can’t be ampli­fied. In fact, accord­ing to data from SEO plat­form Linkdex, which spon­sors Momen­tol­ogy, the New York Times, the Atlantic and the New York­er lead the way among news and media web­sites in terms of site vis­its from search­es on a nation­al lev­el – and there­fore have the most vis­i­bil­i­ty over­all. But so far in this elec­tion, pop-cul­ture-gen­er­at­ed polit­i­cal con­tent is also hold­ing sway, dri­ving views and shares – and impact­ing search behav­ior. In addi­tion, we’re see­ing can­di­dates pur­pose­ly align them­selves with influ­encers and start to test out new plat­forms in some­thing of a pre­view of things to come. Here’s a look at influ­encers so far in the 2016 elec­tion – and what’s next.

‘I Can See Russia From My House”

Take SNL, for exam­ple. The 40-year-old sketch com­e­dy show has a long his­to­ry of sat­i­riz­ing the Com­man­der in Chief, from Chevy Chase as a clum­sy Ger­ald Ford and Dar­rell Ham­mond as a wom­an­iz­ing Bill Clin­ton to Will Fer­rell as a less-than-bright George W. Bush – which itself spurred a Broad­way show and an HBO spe­cial, You’re Wel­come Amer­i­ca — and, of course, Tina Fey as a MIL­Fy Sarah Palin.

It’s too late to quan­ti­fy the impact of these moments on the elec­tions they pre­ced­ed, but it’s fair to say Fey’s turn as Palin was, at the very least, a big cul­tur­al moment. (And Palin’s sub­se­quent appear­ance on the show spurred a sketch in which a very preg­nant

It’s too late to quan­ti­fy the impact of these moments on the elec­tions they pre­ced­ed, but it’s fair to say Fey’s turn as Palin was, at the very least, a big cul­tur­al moment. (And Palin’s sub­se­quent appear­ance on the show spurred a sketch in which a very preg­nant Amy Poehler rapped about Bill Ayers, the Bridge to Nowhere and killing moose, which might be one of SNL’s most mem­o­rable political(-ish) sketch­es of all time). And it seems Fey’s still got it.

Her return to SNL to endorse Don­ald Trump as Palin gen­er­at­ed 7.3 mil­lion views on YouTube alone and anoth­er rough­ly 10 mil­lion views on Face­book, per video ad tech firm Pix­a­bil­i­ty. And, per anoth­er video ad tech firm, Unruly, the video net­ted 113,000 shares on YouTube and 182,000 on Face­book. A faux Trump ad that fol­lowed has 6.1 mil­lion views on YouTube to date, as well as about 20 mil­lion views on Face­book, Pix­a­bil­i­ty says. And, accord­ing to Unruly, this Vot­ers for Trump spot gen­er­at­ed 100,000 YouTube shares and 735,000 Face­book shares. “These are shared like cat videos but not for the same rea­sons,” says Mark DiMas­si­mo, CEO and chief cre­ative offi­cer at agency DiMas­si­mo Gold­stein. “It’s not because they’re cute and cud­dly – it’s because they are sharp and dead­ly.”

#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain

But SNL isn’t the only game in town any­more. The Dai­ly Show with Jon Stew­art debuted in 1999 and over the course of 16 sea­sons, focused heav­i­ly on pol­i­tics and media, lead­ing some to call Stew­art America’s lead­ing polit­i­cal satirist. And Stew­art arguably gave rise to John Oliv­er and Last Week Tonight, which, with all due respect to Trevor Noah, has real­ly picked up where Stew­art left off. For his part, Tom Edwards, chief dig­i­tal offi­cer at mar­ket­ing agency Epsilon, points to Stewart’s 2008 elec­tion cov­er­age as a key dri­ver for con­nect­ing can­di­dates with younger audi­ences and empow­er­ing vot­ers and facil­i­tat­ing crit­i­cal thought. “In 2016, the abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute and ampli­fy video con­tent means that the reach poten­tial of con­tent such as Oliver’s rant or oth­er con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant con­tent has the poten­tial to be ampli­fied very quick­ly,” Edwards adds. Case in point: Oliver’s seg­ment on Don­ald Trump aired Feb­ru­ary 28, caus­ing huge buzz, includ­ing 22.2 mil­lion views on YouTube and near­ly 60 mil­lion views on Face­book, accord­ing to Pix­a­bil­i­ty, as well as 1.1 mil­lion shares on YouTube and 1.8 mil­lion shares on Face­book, Unruly says.

Fur­ther, Michael Lieber­man, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Ten­thav­enue, points to Oliver’s use of dig­i­tal inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and social as exten­sions of his broad­casts’ abil­i­ty to influ­ence. “The cre­ation of #Drumpf and a web plug-in that turns all men­tions of Trump to Drumpf are great exam­ples of how he goes beyond the dis­tri­b­u­tion of video clips to influ­ence the con­ver­sa­tion,” Lieber­man adds. And in just eight days, the Oliv­er-endorsed hash­tag #Make­Donald­DrumpfA­gain gen­er­at­ed 554,000 men­tions, along with anoth­er 66,000 for #Drumpf, per social media ana­lyt­ics firm Talk­walk­er. Addi­tion­al data from Pix­a­bil­i­ty demon­strates a clear spike in glob­al YouTube search after these seg­ments aired. So it isn’t just views and shares – the con­tent Oliv­er and SNL cre­at­ed actu­al­ly impact­ed search behav­ior. Fur­ther, web traf­fic ana­lyt­ics firm Sim­i­lar­Web con­firms search key­words that sent traf­fic to YouTube via desk­top were also up after the Oliv­er seg­ment ran, includ­ing “John Oliv­er” – which was 1.6 mil­lion in the last month – and up from 280,000 in Jan­u­ary. Per Cody Sim­monds, strate­gist at cre­ative agency Struck, this is in part because the con­tent is rais­ing ques­tions that make view­ers want to dig deep­er into the issues. “Audi­ences are def­i­nite­ly query­ing and com­ment­ing based on what they see on tele­vi­sion, be it a debate or political/entertainment pro­gram­ming,” Lieber­man adds. “This is an ingrained behav­ior we have seen with pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment pro­gram­ming that has car­ried over to the polit­i­cal are­na.” Lieber­man also notes Trump and Trump-relat­ed queries have been among the most pop­u­lar polit­i­cal top­ics since ear­ly in the elec­tion cycle. Indeed, Linkdex data shows Trump is the most searched-for can­di­date over­all to date, cap­tur­ing 40.73 per­cent of all top­ic-relat­ed search­es. (He is fol­lowed by Bernie Sanders with 18.26 per­cent and Hillary Clin­ton with 9.09 per­cent.) “How­ev­er, whether increas­es and decreas­es in queries will ulti­mate­ly prove to be an indi­ca­tion of pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive Trump sup­port or sim­ply curios­i­ty remains to be seen,” Lieber­man adds.

Girls, Girls, Girls

But the can­di­dates them­selves aren’t sit­ting idly by. Take Clin­ton, for exam­ple. She (pre­sum­ably) tapped Girls cre­ator Lena Dun­ham to post images on Insta­gram to her 2.4 mil­lion fol­low­ers. Dun­ham has shared plen­ty of visu­al Clin­ton con­tent so far – par­tic­u­lar­ly wear­ing clothes embossed with the candidate’s name, gen­er­at­ing tens of thou­sands of likes apiece, and blogged about her expe­ri­ence on the cam­paign trail in a trav­el­ogue on the Clin­ton web­site. Clin­ton also received the sup­port of wild­ly pro­lif­ic TV pro­duc­er Shon­da Rhimes and the lead­ing ladies of her shows, Vio­la Davis, Ker­ry Wash­ing­ton and Ellen Pom­peo, in a video, Real Life, that draws par­al­lels between the strong char­ac­ters they play and the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and has about 240,000 views.

And, of course, then there’s Clin­ton show­ing off her act­ing chops on an episode of Broad City in which star-struck side­kicks Abbi Jacob­son and Ilana Glaz­er cross paths with Clin­ton and freak out. In turn, the Clin­ton cam­paign used the moment to blog about what Broad City got right and wrong about its Brook­lyn head­quar­ters.

Talking Shop with Bernie Sanders

But, like the elec­tion itself, per­haps, don’t count Sanders out.

He sat down with hip-hop artist Killer Mike to film a series of six videos in which they talk about issues like eco­nom­ic free­dom, social jus­tice, a rigged econ­o­my and free health care. The videos have 2.3 mil­lion views to date. And, for his part, Killer Mike has about 200,000 fol­low­ers apiece on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.

Cruz Commander

And it’s not just the Democ­rats. To wit: Phil Robert­son, founder of duck call brand Duck Com­man­der and patri­arch of the real­i­ty show Duck Dynasty, endorsed Ted Cruz in a video, Cruz Com­man­der, that has over 1 mil­lion views to date. For its part, the Duck Dynasty brand has 2.2 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers and 8.3 mil­lion Face­book likes. How­ev­er, it is per­haps worth not­ing Phil’s son Willie – the CEO of Duck Com­man­der and anoth­er Duck Dynasty star – advo­cat­ed for Trump to his 2.4 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers. (Trump won the pri­ma­ry in the Robert­sons’ home state of Louisiana with 41.4 per­cent of the vote, but both Trump and Cruz walked away with 18 del­e­gates.)

#MakeAmericaGreatAgain

And then there’s Trump him­self, who is arguably an influ­encer in his own right, boast­ing 7.1 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers, 6.6 mil­lion Face­book likes and 1.2 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers. He has also mas­ter­ful­ly dom­i­nat­ed head­lines to date. “The key learn­ing now appears to be about ampli­fi­ca­tion not nec­es­sar­i­ly to spread a candidate’s mes­sage, but sim­ply as a dom­i­na­tion tac­tic – Trump dom­i­nates the broad­cast, online and social news cycles in a way we have nev­er before seen,” Lieber­man says. “Even the SNL and John Oliv­er pieces serve, to some degree, to remove the spot­light from oth­er can­di­dates and focus it on Trump. Can­di­dates look­ing to draw atten­tion to them­selves need to find ways of dis­rupt­ing the online news and social con­ver­sa­tions that keep Trump front and cen­ter for most vot­ers. And vot­ers look­ing for more infor­ma­tion need to dig deep­er to find more infor­ma­tion on oth­er can­di­dates when every sto­ry is about Trump.”

More, More, More

And it’s only going to get nois­i­er. For one thing, that means more acti­va­tions on more plat­forms. Case in point: Clin­ton post­ed her first Red­dit in ear­ly March. But it also means more con­tent from more influ­encers. Jesse Leim­gru­ber, CEO of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Neo­Re­ach, says he has spo­ken to “a num­ber of famous YouTu­bers who are plan­ning their endorse­ment announce­ments in the upcom­ing months,” and points to CJ Pear­son, the “young con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activist” who recent­ly made head­lines for sup­port­ing Sanders, as a good exam­ple. Fur­ther, Skyler Irvine, CEO of dig­i­tal media and con­tent mar­ket­ing firm Grace Lane, notes the pro­lif­er­a­tion of plat­forms means audi­ences are get­ting small­er, which poten­tial­ly lim­its each influencer’s impact on the elec­tion over­all, but increas­es his or her influ­ence over audi­ence-spe­cif­ic prod­ucts and ser­vices.

So…What’s Next?

In the end, the adage, “There’s no such thing as bad pub­lic­i­ty,” may be the best advice for can­di­dates to keep in mind. That’s in part because mar­keters agree the bulk of con­tent to date like­ly only rein­forces exist­ing sen­ti­ment. But all is not lost. Even if con­tent mere­ly cre­ates con­ver­sa­tion rather than alters per­cep­tions, Assaf Henkin, senior vice pres­i­dent of brand intel­li­gence solu­tions at mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Amobee, says the added expo­sure can be used by savvy can­di­dates to fur­ther con­nect with vot­ers to set the record straight on cer­tain issues, to respond to oth­er can­di­dates or to even show vot­ers they have a sense of humor. Edwards agrees the can­di­dates that can poke fun at them­selves have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther con­nect with poten­tial vot­ers. “For the cam­paigns with savvy dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies in place, lever­ag­ing the con­ver­sa­tion cre­at­ed to inte­grate their mes­sag­ing can be a sound strat­e­gy, if the con­tent is con­tex­tu­al and res­onates with the intend­ed audi­ence,” he adds. Fur­ther, Edwards says the key for cam­paigns is to not only invest in tra­di­tion­al search and paid media strate­gies, but to also be agile to top­i­cal and social con­ver­sa­tion. “Some­thing like the Trump SNL ad will gen­er­ate a lot of atten­tion that oth­er RNC can­di­dates could quick­ly exe­cute an SEM and Twit­ter Search strat­e­gy on to fur­ther dri­ve their per­sua­sive mes­sag­ing,” he adds. “The key for can­di­dates is that every men­tion and inter­ac­tion is anoth­er sig­nal for the cam­paigns to tar­get to rein­force their posi­tion and dri­ve action from vot­ers in key pri­maries and the gen­er­al elec­tion.”