| |||||||||||
PRINT
COMMENT
SUBSCRIBE
RSSI spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in San Diego--not hanging on the beach as I would have liked in mid-August, but attending and speaking at "All Things Political," a training session for more than 100 political consultants put on by Campaigns & Elections Magazine and the eVoter Institute.
2006 is a critical mid-term election year and it all comes together this November, with general election races for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, one-third of the U.S. Senate seats, a large number of state governorships and state and country row offices, and of course, a lot of early posturing by prospective candidates for the 2008 presidential race. Add to that dozens of ballot initiatives and referendums, and you've got a big election year unfolding. For political consultants, this time in this year, is the lull before the storm.
To give a sense of what this could mean in advertising dollars (the metric that we like to measure things by in this industry), more than $5 billion was spent on political advertising and promotion in 2004, and that number is expected to exceed $9 billion in the 2008 presidential year. Wow! That's a lot of money. Mid-term years don't tend to generate as much money, but they do tend to come pretty close.
As you might imagine, and as you might have read in MediaPost earlier this week, everybody is wondering what role the Internet and online advertising might play in these upcoming elections. While there are certainly some good indicators, one of the things that I learned at the conference was that we as an industry have some significant challenges if we hope to divert a significant amount of that spend into online advertising dollars. For online advertising to capture even 5 percent to 10 percent of political advertising spend by 2008, we've got a lot of work to do. Here are our key challenges:
- Domain knowledge. Political advertising is rarely placed by traditional advertising professionals or agencies. It is placed by political media consultants, and they are a unique breed and a rather tight community. They speak their own language. To get their money, you need to get to know them and learn their business. It is a long-term process--and you have to start now if you have any hope to be ready by the time 2008 money is spent.
- Focus on the Internet for tools, not media. Political campaigns are learning to love the Internet, but not for its advertising placement opportunities. Rather, they love targeted e-mail, Web sites, self-service online fundraising tools and cool viral marketing. They love the fact that the Internet has become an incredibly efficient method to find and communicate with volunteers and an extraordinary tool for cost-effective fund-raising. Historically, no major campaign has spent even one-half of one percent of its budget on online advertising. Of course, political consultants have also learned that every mistake their candidate makes in a public appearance is fodder for YouTube.
- Love for television. Political consultants love TV. Why? Because it works for them. Because their candidates and their families love to see themselves on TV. Because political donors love to see their candidates and their families on TV. Because it is easy to buy and they know it well. And, most important, because the consultants can mark it up 15 percent and make a ton of money while buying. And yes, they still do make those kinds of margins, even when making $50 and $80 million dollar placements. They know GRPs and TRPs and aren't very comfortable trying to understand what click-through rates should be on banner ads. They love targeting and frequency, but find it almost impossible to achieve online with any one online media property. They can buy local frequency on TV and cable all day, everyday.
- Comfort with direct mail. They know and love direct mail. They have been using it for years, and it works. They know and understand database marketing and like what it can do with direct mail. They are beginning to love e-mail for the same reason, but typically only want to buy online banners if they are using them to drive fundraising to buy more TV--and paying for the banners on a direct marketing model.
- Audience demographics. While the Internet has certainly become mainstream, it still under-represents those who are most likely to vote: older and more blue-collar--and over-represents those least likely or unable to vote: children, teens, students, and young mobile adults.
Given these rather daunting challenges, do we have a realistic shot at getting a 5 percent to 10 percent of political advertising spend online in 2008? Yes, I think so. Why? Because in the end, we know that online advertising can do things that traditional media channels cannot. In spite of the challenges, some smart consultants and candidates will start figuring that out--much like Howard Dean did with Internet tools in the 2004 primaries. These candidates will win because they learn how to harness online advertising--while fear, ego and competition will bring the others online behind them.
RSS FEEDS
For the Kerry Campaign, online purchases were eschewed until after the campaign was pretty much the Democratic nominee - with the exception of some trial attempts (we made some Gator purchases for a email signup campaign and a BlogAds purchase when the inventory was not as expensive as it is today). You can read about some of our efforts and insights at OJR - http://ojr.org/ojr/business/1090362500.php
On campaigns, keyword purchases are okay - but was not away of google's bidding process the way it is described above. We often focused on the campaign specifically - terms like the candidate, the competition and the race - and did not find the performance work with other keywords.
Purchasing banners - well, the only time it turned out to have any ROI was after we were the presumptive nomimee, and then only in newspapers which lead directly to fundraising. Issue ads, negative campaign ads, etcera - not the medium that campaign or the media consultants look for.
As Scott Delea speaks above - there is a ton of hurdles to overcome - and I would add, you face the challenge of convincing campaigns to make the spend immediately, since the only stage where the campaign is flush with cash is just before the real start of the campaign - around Labor Day - when the voters begin to notice that there is a campaign. Unless you are where they are (locally), it is a challenge to convince a campaign manager (or Communications Director) to make a purchase.
I think Dave's guestimate of 5-10% of the mecdia budget EXTREMELY high. My rationale is the following - the previous Presidential Campaign spent close to half a billion dollars during the 2004 cycle, much higher than the 2000 cycle when the seat was open. Let's just guess that the spend will be close to $1B this cycle. That means that $50 to 100M will be spent on online advertising?
Even if you divide it 2 to 1 (Rep to Dem), I can not see the spend topping more than $2 to 10M for the entire cycle - including all the monies spent from local, state and federal candidates. Unless you include email programs - but then again, the GOP and the DNC now have their own bulk mail systems. It will be interesting to see - because while campaigns do like the use of self-service fundraising (hence the discussion of the Internet being an ATM for Democrats) and connecting wil volunteers (via call aggregation and email lists), advertising will be somewhat challenging. And - lets add one last part of the puzzle: campaigns are risk adverse. Until it proves itself well in terms of monies or votes, no staffer or consultant will accept the responsibility of making a spend. That will be the hurdle that will impact the adoption over the next cycle.
Read more about my thoughts on politics and tehcnology at www.politicalgastronomica.com
Patricia McCarron Yellin/McCarron Media Management
I wanted to test my hypothesis that politics are no longer local, that they are now national, particularly to the highly partisan who would give small donations to Democrats running for offices in races they were not eligible to vote in and raise money for a New York Democratic Congressional candidate in the process.
My pitch (although you couldn’t fit all of this in one Ad Words Ad) basically was that even if you live 3000 miles away from the district, who wins this election will effect your life. How a Congressperson votes impacts this country and this planet’s future and donating to my candidate will help the Democrats recapture the house and control the legislative agenda.
To be able to truly ascertain if trying to raise money nationally via key word advertising is a viable strategy, I tried to minimize people living in the Congressional district, which encompasses all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn’s exposure to the search campaign by not buying words or phrases that would be obvious choices for awareness, persuasion or “get out the vote� (GOTV), such as my candidate’s and his opponent’s name or words or phrases related to Staten Island or Brooklyn.
The key words I purchased included the names of prominent Democrats, Republican villains like Abramoff and DeLay, Democratic fundraising organizations such as the DCCC and Emily’s List and various issues. These were words and phrases a partisan Democrat might search for. At least that’s what I thought. Google and Yahoo thought otherwise.
Google’s Ad word program is falsely advertised as an auction system. If Google deems your ad copy or landing page irrelevant to the search term, it jacks up the bid price beyond what it would normally be, even if there are no other bidders for the word or phrase.
For example, the DCCC on paper appears to be a good search term for a Democratic Congressional candidate trying to raise money nationally. The DCCC distributes money to Democratic Congressional candidates nationwide. The people who give to the DCCC want the Democrats to take back the house and are already donating to candidates not running for office in their Congressional district, the goal of my search marketing campaign.
Google decided that despite having a link to the DCCC on the landing page at that time, that the ad and website weren’t relevant to the search term and jacked up the bid price to $5 despite no one else bidding on that term. It would be impossible to achieve positive ROI under those circumstances.
Yahoo, citing relevancy didn’t even allow me to buy the term.
I tried reasoning with the search engines, citing context. But the bot and human editors were too literal minded, requiring the ad copy to include the key word and the landing page to be about the search term.
I even tried contacting Google CMO and one of the most powerful people in advertising Tim Armstrong who never returned my calls.
He should have because I would have explained political advertising could be a 9 figure category for Google, but their literal mindness will prevent most campaigns from doing search marketing. This also goes against the Google corporate edict of “doing no evil�, because to me, a highly partisan Democrat, preventing a Democratic Candidate from raising money is evil.
I have a proposal for Tim, which I’m sure he’ll ignore, costing Google potentially tens of millions of dollars. Let me run a Google division dedicated to Democratic political search marketing (You’ll have to find someone to handle the Republicans and minor parties) the way I want to, and I’ll generate around 100 million in billing by Election Day 2008.
Roy Moskowitz CEO Reciprocal Results Communications Director Harrison For Congress
"All Politics Are Local"
If you are running for city council or even the House, you need to be able to target your ads by zip code or even the street. There isn't a lot of this inventory to go around and when you find it, it takes time to piece it together and traffic which ads to the expense and hassle.
The aggregate amount spent on political advertising may be big, but it is a culmination of thousands of local buys. One large chunk of the spend is for a Presidental election and it only comes around once every four years.
Its all about driving votes
Untimately, online needs to prove it can drive results. In the case of political advertising this means votes. Although I am sure online advertising can drive awareness and has the potential to drive votes, I haven't seen enough research or case studies that have proven it. Political consultants are creatures of habit. Until someone proves otherwise they are going to go with they know works. TV is proven to evoke emotion, press, buzz, awareness and most importantly votes at a reasonable cost. We need to challenge online to prove it can do the same thing. The Future
Online has a bright future with political advertising but it is going to stay a local buy to local publishers at lower, infrequent spend levels. If you are an agency looking to serve this market, good luck. Get ready and be willing to pick a side (Dem or Republican) for the life of your agency and be accoustomed to infrequent and labor intensive media buys. To really make any money you will need to serve a number of campaigns and make some money off site development, email management and creative. Don't be surprised if you will only be paid for the amount of donations you obtain and only on performance.
As an online marketer and former political candidate, I am a strong proponent of political online advertising and strongly encourage other interactive marketers to get involved. Today's political consultants need our help and guidance and I am confident online advertising can be effective.
My only suggestion is that you do it for more than the money because it will be tough to build an agency with these types of clients.
Put aside the wide demographics for a minute and go where grassroots movements are having a real and massive impact. Remember Swift Boats? Remember Rathergate? Or, more recently, Lieberman Versus Lamont?