• by Ross Fadner , December 5, 2003

At just 1.4 percent of the active Internet universe, the 1.9 million unique users that visited a Web site for a Democratic presidential candidate in October would, at first glance, seem to be a sizeable but not necessarily extraordinary population. But when you consider that these prospective voters - and consumers - are among the most active online, visiting nearly 2.5 times as many Web sites and spending nearly twice as much time online, you begin to realize the significance of campaign Web site marketing.

Those are among the key findings to come from research released Thursday by Nielsen//NetRatings, which has thrown its hat into the race with a new service aimed at politicos and general online marketers interested in tapping this unique audience base. The service, dubbed PoliticalView, was outlined Thursday during an E-Voter Institute conference by Charles Buchwalter, vice president-client analytics at Nielsen//NetRatings.

Other new political marketing insights were unveiled during the conference, including findings from a Dynamic Logic survey of E-Voter's Political and Advocacy Communication Leaders showing that, among political marketers, there has been a marked increase in the interest of online fundraising and the use of online ads.

Email - although still a popular tool for political marketers - has remained constant in terms of interest in its use, but political fundraising, which was so effective in Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent California recall victory, now seems to be the first item on every marketer's online wish list.

Overall, the data shows that online advertising posted a 21% increase in interest over 2002 and a 106% increase over 2001, revealing that two out of three marketers consider it to be a prominent marketing tool.

However, despite renewed political interest in the marketing power of the Internet, the Dynamic Logic survey shows that political communications experts still believe that direct contact between the candidate and the voters, as well as television exposure, are the most effective means for reaching and persuading voters. Response to the Dynamic Logic survey further supports this: direct contact and TV ads posted one and two in the survey, while direct mail, radio ads, phone calls, and email placed third. Online advertising ranked behind newspaper ads and yard signs in terms of effectiveness at persuading voters.

"The Internet will not make or break a political campaign," asserts Costas Panagoulas, executive director of the political communications management program, department of politics, New York University. "For a long time television dominated political campaigns, but grassroots advertising didn't disappear; neither did radio, direct mail, or newspapers," he said. "The Internet is a powerful and potent communications tool, but it is still just one tool. Messages win or lose elections."

Karen Jagoda, president of E-Voter Institute, who commissioned the survey, says, "This third annual survey is significant in that it shows that political and advocacy communication leaders are tending to discount Internet use in the near term, yet see it effective further out," adding that, "The biggest obstacle still seems to be that the Internet is not perceived as a tool that can reach the right kind of voters."