• by Kate Kaye , April 14, 2004

The presidential election is months away, but it took mere hours for fund raising ads on the Web to have an impact on the Kerry campaign.

"The buys were so cheap, but within the first couple of hours of the ad running, we knew we had something," recalls Nancy Eiring, national director of grassroots fund raising for John Kerry for President. What began as a $5,000 test buy on New York Times Digital's NYTimes.com quickly received a 50 percent boost to $7,500 once the results started rolling in.

The brightly colored animated ad ran throughout the NYTimes.com site on March 24 and 25, the final days of Kerry's $10 million in 10 days fund raising effort that culminated with the March 25 Democratic National Committee Unity Day. "We're running a never back down campaign," read the cartoon-style ad, which drove traffic to the John Kerry for President Web site contribution page. The copy continued: "Your $25 gift now can put us over the top and help topple Bush." The ad also ran on The Washington Post Co.'s washingtonpost.com on March 25.

The Kerry camp approached NYTimes.com just a day before it wanted the ads to run. "I don't think it was hasty; I think they've been very methodical," insists Jason Krebs, vice president, sales and marketing, NYTimes.com. The campaign staff was prepared and aware of site specifications and file size limitations: "When the time came, they were ready to pounce," Krebs says.

This wasn't the first time the Kerry campaign placed Internet ads. In fact, according to information tracked by Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, Kerry ads began running online last year on sites including The Onion, WebShots, MileSource.com, AnyWho, and BlackPlanet.com. In addition, the Kerry campaign has run skyscraper-size streaming video ads on Time Warner properties AOL City Guide and CNN Money that enabled viewers to register directly in the ad for campaign emails.

The NYTimes.com and washingtonpost.com buys, however, marked the first truly concentrated online ad effort conducted by the campaign. According to a Kerry for President spokesperson, the ads were launched, in part, to build on the momentum prompted by Kerry's Super Tuesday primary success, and to prod supporters to donate. Bill Maddock, account executive at NYTimes.com, notes that most of the donations derived through the NYTimes.com site were driven via home page placements.

The integrated 10-day campaign combined the shorter Web run with direct mail and telemarketing components, as well as emails sent to the DNC and Kerry for President registrant lists. Online ad dollars are not being siphoned from other media budgets. Instead, says Eiring, the campaign is reinvesting money gathered through fund raising efforts.

Not only was the $10 million in 10 days goal reached, according to Eiring, the campaign raised $20 million in the month of March, bringing the first-quarter 2004 fund raising total to $26.7 million. "We're just tapping into an audience we're not tapping into through traditional fund raising means," she maintains. "Unlike direct mail and telemarketing, where we're targeting a specific audience, the reach is so broad with the Internet, we're reaching people we would never tap into through those [methods]."

Although television remains the medium of choice for political campaigns when it comes to reaching a mass audience, the cost efficiency of Web ads and the immediate call-to-action they enable positions the Internet to become a major fund raising force.

It comes as no surprise that Kerry for President has continued to run Web ads to drive fund raising. According to Krebs, the NYTimes.com buy has been renewed twice and extended to the Times' sister site, Boston.com. The campaign has also branched out to additional sites including CNN.com, Salon.com, and San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate. On average, the overall ad campaign has garnered 4 percent click-through rates, according to Eiring, who says the fund raising ad creative and messaging will undergo a series of modifications over time.

New creative will be launched in phases, rather than in one fell swoop. "We're looking for a net positive on these ads," Eiring emphasizes. "When we see results slowing down a bit, we'll move into the launch of another ad."

The campaign will begin a shift toward issue-oriented ads, at which time ad-targeting will become more refined and more contextually driven, according to Eiring. For instance, an ad highlighting an environmental issue might be placed on a site featuring content related to the environment and environmental issues.