There is no question political and advocacy campaigns have embraced the Internet as part of the 2008 campaign cycle. Blogs, social networks and the YouTube phenomenon all are prevalent aspects of the marketing mix, and most campaigns have perfected fundraising and e-mail marketing online.
However, to date, the presidential campaigns have overlooked an opportunity to capitalize on what non-political marketers have known for years: online advertising works. Otherwise, it would not be a $20 billion industry, surpassing radio advertising revenue and continuing to grow at 20 percent each year. Today, online represents about 7 percent of all commercial advertising spending in the U.S., versus approximately 1 percent of advertising budgets in the political sector.
But don't think political marketers are ignorant about the Web; they're not. After all, Howard Dean proved you can move the masses to action online, and John Kerry, Ron Paul and John McCain are legendary for their online fundraising accomplishments. The campaigns also have proven to be sophisticated about e-mail acquisition and database marketing. Political marketers being hesitant to advertise online seems to stem more from the need for education and understanding than a lack of desire to embrace the channel.
Earlier this year, I co-authored a whitepaper with several political online experts to address this need. Titled "Best Practices for Political Advertising Online," and published by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, the paper provides political marketers with the specifics they need to start fully embracing online advertising as a means to achieving their political objectives.
In addition to discussing the changed media environment and how to reach voters online, the paper explores the tactics related to political marketers, including search engine marketing, display advertising and lead generation.
The most obvious form of online advertising for most candidates is paid search, which is a key component of any integrated online advertising plan. But display advertising online, or "banner advertising" -- including video -- is the area with the most potential for political marketers. This can be achieved through portals (AOL, MSN, Yahoo), individual news sites and blogs (The Des Moines Register, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post) and ad networks (ValueClick Media, Advertising.com, etc.), which reach more than 70 percent of the U.S. Internet audience with sophisticated quality controls, targeting methods and campaign optimization capabilities in video and banner advertising.
Arguably, the online channel is more efficient than other forms of media, primarily television. There is as much, if not more, video inventory available online, and at much lower cost, including in-banner and in-stream video impressions that can be geo-targeted to key primary states.
Political advertising online will not sell out, and candidates' ads don't run back-to-back against each other like they do on television. Furthermore, online advertising can be highly targeted based on contextual, demographic, psychographic, technographic and behavioral attributes. Viewers can't skip ads online, and if they're interested in learning more they're just a click away from hearing the rest of the candidate's message on his or her site and giving the candidate an opportunity to immediately engage them.
2008 online campaign ads
Great article, Tony. Online ads are indeed the next frontier for political campaigns. They're cheaper than television ads but offer more flexibility, targeting, and accountability. The opportunity to do small-scale stealth campaigns is also intriguing.
From my archive of 7,750 online ads, here's a few examples from the 2008 campaign (McCain, Romney, Obama, and some related advocacy groups):
2008 campaign online ad examples
More broadly, here's a bunch of online ads on the general topic of politics:
political online ad examples
If your readers have other online campaign ads to share, they can reach me through the archive's "contact" form.