Midas Oracle .ORG » Adam Siegel

She seems to be real.

Adam Siegel — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:55:26 +0000

There has been some discussion over the years about whether Sarah Jones was a real person since solicitations to participate in “your PM Cluster” sounded very much like another person. Well we just picked up a voicemail on our main line from none other than Sarah Jones (at least that’s what she said her name was ) so it seems she does actually exist. Admittedly I had wondered if she was an imaginary friend too, but perhaps this urban legend can finally be put to rest.

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CNN Political Market officially launches.

Adam Siegel — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:30:51 +0000

As Chris alluded to a few days ago in a post, we’ve worked with CNN to launch a marketplace for this election season. A smattering of markets are available now with more to come, I’m told. So if you like trading in Inkling and want to participate in what I assume will quickly become our largest marketplace (it’s featured now on http://cnn.com and the inbound traffic is “remarkable” to say the least) you can go here: politicalmarket.cnn.com

Could a political campaign use prediction markets?

Adam Siegel — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:32:58 +0000

This is cross-posted from our Inkling Markets blog where we have far fewer readers than the illustrious Midas Oracle. …

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There are several prediction marketplaces out there for the upcoming U.S. election season and probably more to come. All the ones we know of are intended for participation by the general public. But what if a Presidential campaign ran an internal marketplace? How could prediction markets be used to give a campaign a competitive advantage? We put our political operative hats on for a few minutes and came up with some scenarios:

Resource Allocations

Speaking to veterans of previous presidential campaigns, one of the biggest issues mentioned was building consensus internally on resource allocation across the primaries, then for the general election. Conflicting polling data and infighting among advisors often led to the abandonment of several states where post-mortem analysis of actual voting patterns showed the candidate would have had a chance. Using prediction markets as input to resource allocation decisions, questions could be asked that compare performance metrics across different states, i.e. levels of support among certain voter blocs, predicted endorsements, outcomes of local elections that could impact the general election, etc. This type of information is hard to gather through traditional polling mechanisms but could easily be captured across participants from individual states, locales, and the general campaign.

Fundraising Forecasts

We assume existing forecasting methods used by campaigns are fairly accurate at anticipating how much money will be raised on a quarterly basis from a defined donor list. What may not be as well defined, however, is the impact of various campaign maneuvers on donation levels. For example, a campaign could internally test various scenarios with national campaign staff, field workers, even undecided voters to see if certain activities drive increased fundraising. If the campaign goes through with the activity, the campaign could evaluate the market and pay it out. If not, the market could simply be refunded. Of course, a campaign could also use prediction markets as further input to official forecasts across the different fundraising channels, allowing a more diverse group of people who may have additional insight beyond the “MBA types” at campaign headquarters crunching numbers.

Risk Management

(Using Inkling,) questions in a prediction market could be generated by the national campaign and staff at the local level. This “web of questions” would be especially useful when trying to anticipate risks to the campaign. The prediction market could be a clearing house of the whispers, rumors, and self-perceived weaknesses of the campaign to continuously test their merit or impact on the campaign. For example, someone from the local staff may be aware of a negative perception the candidate suffers from in a particular voting district. They could run a prediction market about its impacts in an upcoming primary, i.e. “Will the candidate be perceived as weak on X in analysis of post-appearance local media coverage?” If the stock price remains low, that issue probably does not need to be dealt with specifically. If it’s high, it may be an issue the campaign chooses to address proactively ahead of the predicted negative coverage.

Policy Predictions

Given the interest shown to any major candidate, a prediction market gives a campaign an outlet for those supporters wishing to participate in a more meaningful way than simply donating money. A market geared towards public policy across a wide range of issues, both national and local, would be an excellent resource to send people to. Currently most candidate’s online presence is focused largely on networking, information dissemination, event notifications, and fundraising. A broadly available prediction market would allow people to provide input on what they think will happen from a policy perspective, i.e. will a particular bill pass? How much funding will an initiative receive, etc.? The campaign could then take these predictions as input to shape policy. A similar marketplace could also be set up with a more limited audience of dedicated national and local campaign staff. This marketplace could be augmented with policy experts from around the world to provide additional perspective.

Competitive Analysis

Intended for a tightly controlled group of trusted participants, prediction markets could be run on the performance of the other candidates related to their fundraising levels, endorsements, primary performance, etc. to see how one candidate compares to another. This information would be very useful for strategy formulation. Four years ago some of the candidates tapped the blogosphere to drive early campaign participation and fundraising success.

This year most candidates are trying to build up and leverage their online social networks a la Facebook. Will this campaign season also be the year we see a candidate tapping the collective wisdom of his/her sprawling campaign apparatus?

Inkling Free Pilot Program

Adam Siegel — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:40:39 +0000

We try not to post directly about our platform or new clients on Midas Oracle, leaving it up to Chris to highlight the good… and the bad … but we thought people might be interested in a new capability we just launched this morning since it’s actually something everyone can try. You can now go to http://www.inklingmarkets.com and sign up for a free trial of a private, fully-featured marketplace. Just choose a name and URL for your marketplace, fill in your desired username and password, and you’re off and running. From day 1, when we launched Inkling, we have been big believers in allowing people to try before they buy, and this is the latest extension of that –hopefully making it even easier to try our platform beyond just being active on our public marketplace. This is something you can securely run inside your organization or publicly. We’ve also created a new help/reference section you’ll see as an administrator when you login to your marketplace. There are lots of lessons learned and best practices about managing a marketplace, providing appropriate incentives, creating effective markets, etc. Let us know if you have any questions/feedback or run in to any issues.