• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, March 2, 2016

We’ve heard a lot about how presidential campaigns are benefiting from real-time marketing tactics and the use of audience targeting. But any type of content creator, from big publishers to individual bloggers, can do this with a new platform called Live Vote.

Live Vote, currently in beta, is a global analytics platform that gathers real-time consumer sentiment -- actionable data that can increase engagement, boost the shelf life of content and extend content syndication, according to Eder Holguin, CEO, Live Vote.

Wire service UPI and AOL are currently testing the platform. Live Vote is also in discussions with a political news site, says Holguin.

How it works: UPI can log into the platform, create an event around editorial content and customize the types of questions and the data it wants to collect. Live Vote enables UPI to take all the information and create a script or code to embed into its content management system. “We create a simple frame that embeds on top of the content,” Holguin says.

One “event” that ran in February posed the question: "Is Hillary Clinton ready to be president?"

Emojis appeared on-screen to represent the total number of votes cast and to capture overall sentiment, which was considered "very positive" for Clinton, Holguin says. The total broke down into those who "strongly agree" (28% of total votes); "agree" (41% of total votes); were "neutral" (10%); "disagree" (8%) and "strongly disagree" (13%) with the question. There were 925,987 total votes: 75% from women, 20% from men, and 5% "other." Age breakdown was as follows: 18 to 24 (18%); 25 to 34 (35%); 35 to 44 (16%); 45 to 54 (18%); 55 to 64 (8%) and 65 + (5%).

The real-time feature enables the data to get really granular, showing voting at particular junctures during a speech or debate.

Live Vote focused another event on an article about presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders that posed a question about Sanders’ desire to break up big banks: “Reasonable or Radical?” That question received 10,000 live votes; final results were not available yet.

The headline page of each poll question presents the option to add a live vote. When readers vote, they can see the current poll results. The real-time data is naturally a draw to presidential campaigns, as candidates are eager to curry public favor, generate buzz and react to attacks.

Notably, Live Vote has multiple applications. Beyond publishers, the  company could work with market research companies on customized surveys or movie studios that want to know how people are reacting to movie trailers and certain parts of the trailers in real time.

This type of tool isn’t actually for real-time marketing, it’s actually about real-time analytics. As far as I can tell, all marketers and publishers are looking for this type of actionable data.