The Influence Industry Explorer

In the Influence Industry Explorer, we present findings from our research into 500 companies operating in the business of political influence. You can either explore the companies through our interactive and open database or scroll down to read our case studies which provide insight into specific companies, our research methodology, and the course of our investigation.

The Influence Industry Case Studies

  • Google Ads in Election Campaigns

    In this article, we will look in depth at the different advertising possibilities offered by Google and YouTube, how they are used by political campaigns and what exactly consultants and agencies might be asked to do by a candidate or party.

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  • The Industry Behind Your Vote: A Visual Essay

    In this visual essay, we use Donald Trump’s 2020 US presidential campaign as a case study to define the basic scope of the influence industry. To do this, we look into spending on data-driven influence services found in the Federal Election Commission’s spending database. As we follow the…

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  • Investigating the Companies Behind our Political Opinions

    Consultant Brad Parscale develops Donald Trump's social media campaigns in 2016 and 2020, Experian is a data broker that sold data to political parties in the UK and Brazil, uCampaign make political apps across the world. These few examples are only a small fraction of hundreds of companies…

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  • Follow The Money: Cambridge Analytica and US election spending database

    Few companies from within the Influence Industry have broken out of professional circles and given themselves reason to capture the public imagination as Cambridge Analytica. We use the FEC spending database in the US to look beyond the headlines to investigate a wider and deeper scope of this…

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  • The Explorer Explainer

    The Influence Industry Explorer exhibits the myriad companies working in political influence across the world. In this article you can find a glossary of the data we’ve included and sources we used.

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