Mumbai: After the success of political campaigns conducted on social media by leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the multimedia form of reaching out to voters is rocking the city ahead of the BMC election. On Sunday alone a high-voltage campaign for the municipal corporation polls witnessed 20,000 tweets, 10,000 Facebook posts and 500-odd video clips.Data collected by a media agency shows that over 2,700 tweets were related to the BMC, and of these 1,400 were about the BMC administration and 1,300 about the BMC election as parties used various hashtags to woo voters. The data suggests that the war is mostly between BJP and the Shiv Sena supporters, who are making claims and counter-claims.Several candidates and party leaders are also using Facebook Live to interact with voters.Parties and candidates are going for messages to target audiences on multiple social media or internet platforms. There are social media cells at the ward and the city level to accomplishing the task.Helping the parties is an evolving tool called programmatic advertising, a new trend coming to India after the US and Europe. Under this, parties can go for real-time bidding for space on all media platforms, including online, to show their presence, advertise their achievements and clarify or convey things to their voters.This method was first used by the campaigners of former US President Barack Obama.Naresh Kshetrapal, who is into digital advertising for the BJP in Delhi, said identifying comments from users, short-listing "key influencers", and every time tracking the impact of comments on people are the key challenges involved in such advertising, where all platforms are needed to be hired quickly to target a select group of people."We highlight our achievements and in case if there is any negative sentiment then we counter it by stating some facts and figures," BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye said.Harshal Pradhan, an aide of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, said his party campaign some of their posts were getting over 3 crore likes. "Around 250 Sainiks are part of this campaign. Our tweeter handle reach is almost 4 crore now," he said.

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