ClickZ Checks In With Two Articles on Political Online Advertising

Kate Kaye checked in with two articles at the end of last week on political online advertising.  Primary Season Signals Adoption of Online Ads By Political Campaigns and Web Ads May Have Aided  Obama's High January Fundraising are really two complimentary articles and as usual Kate does a real thorough job of provided data and insight into what is really going on versus guessing as to what is happening.  Personally, I really can't go into much detail because she profiles our online advertising efforts for Senator McCain, but here's what I'd add to Kate's articles:

1. I don't believe there is a direct correlation between Obama's January fundraising numbers and his large online buy in January.  The display ads themselves were branding and messaging related and typically those are poor vehicles for generating contributions.
2. However, I do believe the large buy and the look and feel signal a shift in Obama's online tactics to one that is more messaging related.  It has the feel of someone that believes online advertising can be persuasive (it is) and has allocated a small % yet substantial dollars to online advertising.
3. My last thought on Obama is I wonder if their thinking has shifted from a social marketing centric model (free) to a more costly one (advertising)?
4. Kate pointed out that "the majority of McCain's ads were video-enabled, and may have cost more than standard animated ads" and while I can't confirm or deny the cost of the ads Kate is correct that we LOVE running the commercials in our online advertising.  Obviously we can run PointRoll type ads but we've become experts in flash streaming video as well as Google video ads.  Besides, if you had our excellent Spit and Glue Team of Mark McKinnon, Michael Hudome, and our own Justin Germany why wouldn't you use those ads as often as possible.
5. This shouldn't be a surprise from the person that wrote a post of using political ads in online media called Just Stream It.
6. While Kate takes a subtle shot on Team Romney for their ad network shenanigans I do want to point out that every ad network or new technology company that's called me since February 5th mentioned that they tested with Romney.  Clearly Team Romney had a nice test budget for the primary season.
7. Kate profiles all of the campaigns that ran political ads in 2007, however no one except Romney, McCain, and Obama should be taken seriously; that's not to brag or belittle the other campaigns, but if you didn't run more than 10 million ads in a year it doesn't count.
8. No search ads in the numbers seriously under-represents what is happening online.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Comments

[Kate Kaye]

Thanks for the comments on this stuff, Eric. The reason I focus on display advertising by the campaigns is it's tough to find any kind of comprehensive, regularly available data on search advertising by the campaigns. Beyond anecdotal info, I'm kind of at a loss.