A few interesting articles have been released in the past week or so that highlights that the state of online political marketing looks great. Back when I started in political marketing almost 5 years ago, the rage was blogging, Meet-up, Google Bombs, and video broadcasts. While these are all fine and dandy, now I see the more sophisticated campaigns using mobile marketing, behavioral targeting, email marketing, video ads, search marketing, and lots of banner ads. Also, 5 years ago the campaign manager was often someone we rarely spoke with and now campaign managers are very involved in online advertising. Here are a few recent articles...
- Two articles highlighting Michele Bachmann's innovative online marketing campaign, one in TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) and the other in the Star Tribune.
- Carly Fiorina's massive, sophisticated YouTube ad buy is featured in the Atlantic
- Political marketers get feisty with the lack of advertising opportunities available in Twitter - first covered in ClickZ and then picked up by Fast Company.
- Of course the "older" article from ClickZ on political marketing using mobile surges
You probably noticed that I didn't link to any search marketing or display ads but other than a few campaigns, I've noticed plenty of ads buys and complex paid search campaigns and even some smart Facebook campaigns. Regarding the Twitter article, I guess what got me so feisty is that some of the largest Twitter accounts are political yet, there are no viable advertising solutions for us.
While 2008 was definitely when online advertising was placed on the map, people still focused on organic tools like Facebook pages, YouTube channels, MySpace (what a mistake), engaging bloggers, etc. 2010 will be the birth of mobile advertising (not the crappy tactic of sending vote to #12346) and 2012 will be when you do see the tipping point crash through that 10% spend ceiling. Why? All of these smart congressional campaigns will be 2 years wiser, the 2012 Presidential campaign will be fought on the web and not over the air (unless mobile), more of the population will be using electronic devices, paper newspapers should be in a walker, and the campaign managers will move from "what's my website strategy" to "what's my integrated advertising strategy."
I'm writing to tell you, online advertising looks great.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
