• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 31, 2012

It used to be that the most powerful way to hijack your opponent's image was to use it in a negative way in one of your own campaign ads. Nowadays you can turn your opponent's image into an ad to steer voters toward your own, or another campaign message launched via a photo on a Web page. That's what some campaigns have been doing thanks to some new contextual ad formats developed by in-image advertising firm GumGum. Although it can't disclose the group it is working for, GumGum tells Red, White & Blog that an unnamed advocacy group currently is buying images of opposing candidates that launch ads for a voter registration campaign on behalf of a conservative nonprofit foundation. "The campaign targets images of conservative personalities (Chuck Norris, Mitt Romney Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, etc.) and ideals (conservatives, GOP, hunters, NRA, outdoor, Republicans, second amendment, Tea Party, etc.)," a spokesman says. The most popular presidential images during the period analyzed, included images of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and the one of both of them featured here. By the way, the in-image ad folks don't call this practice "hijacking," they call it "conquesting." I call it trickle-down ambush marketing.