Political Online Advertising Recap: Part 2

Well Part 1 of my week-long series sure generated some hype out on the internet.  I don't think Part 2 which will focus on display ads will be as exciting, but let's see how I do ;-)

So, what's the state of banner advertising for political advertising?  Umm, it could be a LOT larger, but it  is definitely a little better than the impression counts mentioned in this ClickZ article called Online Political Ad Spending Down from '04.  I don't fault ClickZ for publishing these numbers because they pulled them from AdRelevance and I know the actual numbers.  For example, I had one client run over 10 million impressions in the month of September 2006 and our totaled combined advertised impressions dwarfed the 16 million mentioned in the article for all political campaigns.  So, what gives?

While I think that most campaign managers get the need for search marketing (but don't realize they need to allocate more dollars) I think they need get more experience with what a display banner ad can do and why it will be superior to network TV buys.  Yes I wrote that and I'm completely sober.  I think the biggest problem that display ads have is that we can track nearly everything about them. One of  our biggest pluses also is our biggest negative.

For every marketing or campaign manager that says, well a 1% click rate means that 99% ignore them, they are the same people that have no idea how many people really saw a TV ad, let alone how many people were compelled to take an action.  I actually had a campaign not renew an online ad campaign in favor of plowing more into TV even though their TV commercials were streamed in a PointRoll unit that had 1000s of hours of documented viewing.  Their cost per 30 seconds viewed on that ad was less than $20, but it still wasn't renewed.  So, what needs to change?

Eric's Top 10 Reasons Why Display Ads Are Better Than TV Ads

1. I can take your commercials and stream them in a PointRoll unit so that when people are online and actually reading political news, they can see your ad
2. Everything is measurable, right down to how many people saw, clicked, donated, signed up for an email, viewed your ad, etc.
3. Note: #2 above is ACTUAL numbers, not something extrapolated from a TV media model built in 1988 that you hope is still accurate
4. Any cost number you want to look at - cost per email, cost per second of a commercial viewed is more efficient online.
5. You can rotate in multiple creatives in a matter of minutes and can have complete control of which ad is seen and where
6. Constant placements like buttons on a homepage, can cheaply reinforce a brand message and drive actions on your website.
7. You can take a list of voters and market directly to them via display ads or streamed video.
8. Speaking of targeting, if you don't have a list, you can use actual demographic profiles or behavioral models instead of some guess provided by a sample of people who agreed to have a tracking box installed on their TV
9. Preroll videos, though I turned my nose up at them for this election cycle (see the ClickZ article called Political Pre-Roll Lags Despite Online Video Hype) are going to change the game in political marketing because they will FORCE users to watch your commercial before the video will play.
10. You get to work with me (the other ideas I had for tracking, audience duplications, brand measurements were not as sexy as working with me)

Really it is better online.  The only, and I mean only, documented positive I can find with TV advertising is that the MSM actually reports out on TV ads, especially the negative ones.  I guess that makes for good drama on network TV these days, but I wouldn't know, since I watch very little network TV and when I do, I TiVo through the commercials.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric