The Web lit up Tuesday with searches at news and social sites related to the elections. The push will likely have an impact on online advertising across the board. Many of the major sites, like Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter, help Americans get the information they need to vote. While Facebook uses its U.S. Politics page to provide information about Tuesday's election, Google analyzed nationwide search stats for interest in Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the past 30 days leading up to the election. Obama attracted searches in Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia, whereas Romney attracted searches in Vermont, Utah, Ohio and New Hampshire, according to Google. Bing Elections 2012 provides live results, which serves up the percentage of votes and votes per states for each candidate. An interesting feature allows users to click a bar to shift the news to the right or the left. A nudge to the right provides more commentary on topics from select news agencies. Twitter Government is tracking the number of tweets. As of 12:45 on Election Day, Obama's 71 outpaced Romney's 59 -- up from 66 and 56, respectively. The social site created a separate election page to highlight relevant political coverage and insight from voters. Obama ran a #VoteObama twitter campaign aimed at securing last minutes votes and swaying independents on Election Day. For those wanting to know how many Americans voted, the Obama campaign created an app that allows people to tell friends on Facebook they have voted. Read the fine print. The app provides the Democratic Party with a great lead generation tool by collecting names, birth dates, photos, email addresses and more. Several sites offer information on polling places, including Google, Obama's camp, and Romney's camp. On Google's Politics & Elections coverage page, voters can tap into money spent for ads per state and candidate, as well as live coverage on YouTube. An uploaded video from centralpavote shows a voting machine altering votes and provides a description of how Obama was initially selected, but the machine highlighted Romney.
Proving the skeptics wrong, Tim Armstrong is delivering on his promise of a revitalized AOL. Despite a challenging advertising market, AOL beat analysts’ revenue expectations for the third quarter on robust ad growth. AOL on Tuesday said third-quarter ad revenue increased 7% to $340 million, while overall revenue was flat at $531.7 million. "We are posting our best relative performance in seven years,” Armstrong, chairman and CEO of AOL, said Tuesday on a conference with analysts. “Advertising revenue is ... growing strongly across many of our investment areas, including video,” Armstrong noted. “Our video revenue was roughly $10 million two years ago, and in 2012, we will do about $100 million in video revenue.” Year-over-year, AOL’s total audience grew by 4% in the third quarter, according to Armstrong. On AOL’s earnings call on Tuesday, Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz said the company was benefitting from “very strong momentum on many key properties from recent events, such as the election on Huffington Post and, more recently, very positive trends on Patch, due to events [related to Hurricane Sandy].” According to Armstrong: “We also have had tremendous mobile growth, and we have 44 million users of our mobile products and services.” Globally, ad revenue grew 7%, which represented AOL’s sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. The company also reported a 7% year-over-year growth in combined AOL properties display and third-party network revenue, which totaled $248.2 million for the quarter. Specifically, third-party network revenue was up 18% in the third quarter -- AOL’s sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. Plus, AOL reported 8% year-over-year growth in search and contextual revenue, representing the company’s first quarter of year-over-year growth in over three years. AOL grew Adjusted OIBDA 12% year-over-year, the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, while reducing Adjusted OIBDA expenses excluding traffic acquisition costs, and one-time items. Continuing its long decline, subscription revenue for AOL's dial-up services fell 10% to $173.5 million.Looking ahead, Armstrong said: “Overall, what you’re going to see is an operational improvement around advertising as we get into 2013.”
New data from Rhythm NewMedia shows an increasingly intertwined relationship between rich media and video in mobile advertising. The mobile video ad network says that trend is driven mainly by growing demand for video advertising on devices. Because rich media providers don’t necessarily offer in-stream video or pre-roll ads for mobile, they’re more frequently adding video to rich media ads to meet that demand. Rich media itself has become more widespread on the Rhythm network -- used in 43% of campaigns in the second and third quarter, compared to just 12% in the year-earlier period. More than a third (36%) of rich media full-page ads used video, and 28% of campaigns used in-banner video in Q2 and Q3. Interaction rates for custom buttons in that ad format -- for getting more information or viewing photos or video, for example -- ranged from 2.2% to 10.8%. For rich full-page ads, Rhythm says adding a mini video player boosts interaction rates for the units by 30%, to 3.8% to 12%. Underscoring the Rhythm findings, mobile ad network Millennial Media indicated in its third-quarter earnings call Monday it’s also seeing an increase in rich media and video advertising. Millennial CEO Paul Palmieri said that growth is driven in part by the expansion of 4G wireless service, making it easier for users to watch mobile video in particular. Millennial CFO Michael Avon added that he expects spending on mobile rich media and video ads to pick up even more in the current quarter as entertainment and retail marketers pull out the stops to grab consumers’ attention during the key holiday shopping season. Earlier this year, eMarketer projected spending on mobile rich media and banner advertising would increase to a third of total U.S. mobile ad dollars, or $861.7 million. Video will account for 5.8%, or $151 million, of the overall $2.6 billion total predicted, up from 4.7% last year. The Rhythm data comes from ads served in the U.S. across iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android and other devices in the second and third quarters. Its network spans more than 200 apps and sites owned by publishers such as NBC Universal, ABC, IAC, and Warner Bros. Brand advertisers on the platform include McDonald’s, Disney, Paramount, General Motors and Ford.
Yahoo is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the company violates a California law by scanning emails in order to send ads to users. Yahoo argues that the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act allows email providers such as itself to record and monitor emails on its servers. The company contends that the federal law trumps California's Invasion of Privacy Act -- a state wiretap law that prohibits companies from intercepting communications without the consent of all parties. Yahoo's court papers, filed last week, come in response to a potential class-action lawsuit brought by Alabama resident Carson Penkava. He alleges that Yahoo violates the California law by "intercepting" messages sent from non-Yahoo email accounts to recipients who use Yahoo. Penkava, who doesn't use Yahoo for email, says he never agreed to the interception. He argues that scanning the messages for keywords and then serving contextual ads infringes his privacy rights under California's law. But Yahoo says that the sweeping federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act trumps a California state law. The comprehensive federal statute, which outlines the privacy rights of email users, says service providers can intercept emails with permission from one of the parties. "Congress’s intent was that states not be permitted to strike a different balance between users’ privacy and the provision of electronic communications services nationwide to their users," Yahoo argues. "While the California legislature has the authority to create laws aimed at protecting privacy by prohibiting certain forms of surveillance, California cannot pursue this goal in a manner that conflicts with Congress’s regulatory scheme." Yahoo also argues that as a practical matter, it must scan messages in order to send them to the correct recipients. "It is therefore not objectively reasonable for Plaintiff to believe that emails he sends to Yahoo subscribers are 'confidential,'" Yahoo argues. The lawsuit is in front of U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif. Google also faces a potential class-action lawsuit in federal court stemming from contextual ads in email. That lawsuit, filed by Texas resident Keith Dunbar, is pending before Koh.
In another extension of its "happiness" theme, Coca-Cola will launch a Happy Places photo-sharing social network tied to its free mobile apps for the same purpose, according to BrandChannel.com. The company registered the name for a Web site domain (happyplaces.com) in June, although it's not yet activated. In releasing its iOS Happy Places app on Nov. 1, Coca-Cola, which already had earlier app versions for Android and BlackBerry devices, according to BrandChannel, described the site as "that place where you can upload photos of your happy moments, share them, and remember them any time you want... and share that moment of happiness with your followers in Happy Places, or your friends in Facebook or Twitter.” Users will also be encouraged to follow hashtags to be alerted when other users upload photos that fit within specific types of "happiness" moments. While Coca-Cola might be at some disadvantage in competing with Instagram and other photo-sharing sites due to its own site's lack of "Instagram-esque filters," its "mighty marketing muscle and impressive global reach means that it has the ability to reach out to whole new audiences that most photo-sharing services never even dream of," noted TheAppSide.com.
Continuing their policy of offering free online access during important events, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are both lowering their online paywalls for coverage of the presidential election, the newspaper Web sites announced Tuesday morning. The Wall Street Journal said it will give free access to all its online content for 24 hours beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 6, allowing non-subscribers to follow election returns and related political coverage, as well as general news and business reporting. The New York Times will begin offering free access to its online election coverage, including its mobile apps, beginning at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Barring electoral mishaps, such as delayed or contested results, which are possible, non-subscribing visitors to the WSJ and NYT Web sites should be able to track the election from the first exit polls to a final result Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Last week, both newspaper Web sites offered several days of free online access during Hurricane Sandy, highlighting the continuing role of newspapers as civic institutions. Previously, the NYT provided free access during Hurricane Irene, which threatened New York City in August 2011. Offering free access during major events can also boost online ad revenue and showcase the online product, wooing more potential subscribers. Circulation revenues from online subscriptions are an increasingly important part of the overall business for The New York Times Co., with online paywalls at the NYT and Boston Globe helping offset continuing declines on the advertising side. In the first nine months of 2012, NYTCO’s circulation revenues increased 8.5% from $640.9 million to $695.2 million, while advertising revenues sank 7.1% from $665.5 million to $618.1 million.
It’s all over except for the shouting, which, given the whole polarized tenor of the race so far, will no doubt be loud and nonstop. I pray that the outcome of this presidential election does not become a Gore-Bush redux, with fighting going on for months. With the mess of Sandy clean-up in the mix, there will no doubt be all sorts of issues about counting the emailed, faxed, scanned, and snail-mailed ballots of storm evacuees or people whose polling places were swept away. Do you remember that iconic photo of the official Floridian chad examiner viewing the marks on a paper ballot through a magnifying glass, with his blown-up eye looking like an enormous beetle? This year, the bug-eyed (and ear-and-brain-clogged) ones are swing state voters, but especially the citizens of Ohio, who have had to endure a crazy-making barrage of attack ads. If you figure out what the candidates actually spent per voter in Ohio, you probably could have hired two brawny aides to carry each Ohioan around all day in a sedan chair for three months. The volume was unprecedented, both in the billions spent on airtime, and in the fact that the TV spots were almost universally lowdown and negative, meant to disparage a rival, rather than set any soaring agenda for candidates. Here’s what was different this year: I can’t think of a single ad that might have moved voter opinion in the presidential race as much as the first debate did. That was unexpected, and Obama’s uncharacteristic and rather shocking passivity reignited Romney’s campaign and gave him a temporary leg up in the polls. Obama came back to rock his essential Barackatude in the second and third debates, all of which attracted huge viewerships. That would suggest that people are searching for up-close, somewhat organic, long-form content on the issues, and not the ugly, by-the-numbers, extruded ad units that the red and blue parties and Super PACS paid to run, over and over. But back to the ads: they seemed set up to reinforce preexisting prejudices, to reignite the violently polarized partisan culture that rose up this political season, resulting in little tolerance for other views. A friend pointed out that she hasn’t seen one person wearing a campaign button this year, when four years ago we were awash in them. Perhaps the hyperpartisan climate this year had a chillingly pin-preventing effect; maybe people were afraid of the punch in the nose that would ensue. I’m an Obama voter, and there’s no way I can be completely objective, I know. But in the spirit of bipartisan election analysis, I thought I’d mention some of the spots that I found particularly egregious. Let’s get Mitt’s out of the way. Yes, there was a lot of blowback to the spot that claimed Obama allowed Chrysler to be sold to Italians who are exporting jobs to China. Whether it’s factually true or not, I haven’t heard the word “Italian” uttered in such a disparaging way in my lifetime. It seemed so retro -- with a visual of a Hitchcockian blonde (the opposite of a dark little woman with a moustache and underarm hair) driving a convertible -- that I actually found it funny. Way worse was the Romney campaign’s “evil Chinese” fear-mongering spot that indulged in Charlie Chan-era stereotypes. Set some time in the future, when the Asian ones have apparently become our evil overlords, it shows a Chinese professor lecturing his students about how stupid the U.S. was in letting its indebtedness to China grow so much. He says this with an evil laugh, and his students laugh, too, as if to suggest that heartless look-alike masses of Chinese are laughing at us losers. As for the Obama camp: Among the contenders was a real sleeper for me, considering that it was created by new “It’ girl Lena Dunham. (I loved her sensibility in her indie movie “Tiny Furniture,” and in her current, hugely honest and self-referential HBO hit series “Girls.) The whole middle of the over-two-minute video -- hectoring college-aged kids on how lame it is not to vote -- was fine. It was the beginning and the end, in which she talks about “her first time,” and that it should be “special” and that “you want to do it with a great guy” that was creepy and cringe-inducing. “Before I was a girl. Now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, behind the polling curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.” Yuck. The self-obsession is not cute in this context. Sexualizing the vote is plain dumb. I actually preferred the spot showing a woman in a pink felt vagina suit, talking about how Democrats treat her well. (The whole crazy talk of “legitimate rape” or rape as a “gift” on the right has brought out a certain fierce vaginal politics on the left. ) The absolute worst was Michael Moore’s spot for MoveOn.org. It opens on a shot of the “Rosebud Nursing Home.” Then it shows sweet little old people cursing like sailors! Hey, that’s a cliche we’ve seen a gazillion times -- why not include a rapping granny while you’re at it? It’s a shame really, because when the first elderly woman (an actress identified as age 97) introduces herself, she has a beautiful voice and says something interesting: “My first vote was in 1940 for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and I have not missed an election since.” Given that vantage point, I was interested in hearing what her opinion of this year’s election was, in a sort of documentary, Rick Burns-ish way. Instead, she says: “I want the Republican party to know, if your voter suppression throughout this beautiful country enables Romney to oust Barack Obama, we will burn this motherfucker down.” Adds Dorothy, a woman of color identified as “age 75”: “If the Republicans steal this election, I’m going to track down Mitt Romney and give him the world’s biggest cock punch… right in the nut sack.” Gee, that’s helpful. That’ll teach him. The Greatest-Generation World War II vet who says he’s gonna watch us having sex after he dies if Romney steals the election just reaffirms that someone should have told Moore this is sophomoric bullshit, not good enough for MoveOn. But, finally, here’s the good news: We have about a year of campaign-ad free airwaves to look forward to now. Enjoy.
I’m writing this before 8 a.m. on Election Day. Right now, the pundits have nothing much to talk about beyond what countless polls have declared and what early turn-out looks like. (Cue images of people entering buildings to vote). Nothing much to be said, but they’re filling time saying it anyway and finding ways to disagree about it for the sake of “good TV." As an Englishman living and working in the U.S. for more than nine years, this is my third electoral cycle. We always had very good coverage of U.S. elections in the UK courtesy of the BBC, but inevitably, this never intensified until the latter stages of the interminably drawn out affair that distracts from the day-to-day business of government for both sides. (In the UK -– as with most other countries -- the whole thing is done and dusted in a matterof weeks). For me, it’s something of a spectator sport with consequences. As with my fellow Brits in the media industry (and the country at large), I pay taxes in the U.S. but cannot vote – which makes me think I should dangle a tea bag in the Hudson River as a salute to irony, but it seems an awful waste of decent tea. But I have a clear favorite in the presidential race and I, like the rest of you, will have strong feelings when the result is called. Feelings will indeed run high. Just remember how it was last time around. The jubilation and exuberance of Obama supporters was reflected by the dismay, disappointment and even hostility of McCain supporters. That polarity of sentiment has colored much of the last four years of political dialogue and action. It’s beenmessy, nasty, noncollaborative and worse. Whichever side you favor, this has not been America’s finest political hour. This time, I suspect the polarity of sentiment will be with us again, only more pronounced. Fueled by the last four years of increasingly hostile campaigning, comment and advertising, we moved even closer to the politics of“anything goes” with the subsequent impact on the nature of civic discourse amongthe populace. Just look at Facebook. Whatever the result, barring a total landslide, it’s safe to assume that for a period of time, a large proportion of the American population is going to be suffering what in emotional terms might thought of as an Electoral Hangover. They’ll feel mixture of sadness and uncertainty; they feel overwhelmed and frustrated; angry and worried. For those voting for the winning candidate the opposite will be true. They’ll be experiencing a kind of emotional high and feeling relieved, happy, confident, excited, hopeful and more. How long these differing emotional states will last depends on what comes next, but the emotional impact of the election is something marketers and media folk would do well to understand and take into account when shaping communications and media plans. While target audiences inevitably comprise people of different political persuasions and while that is not normally a significant factor in communications planning, when political orientation is also an indicator of emotional state, it can begin to impact receptivity and therefore, how messages should be crafted. For example, a financial services company would do well to position itself as having the skills, products and services to protect the customer’s assets when speaking to those that voted for the losing candidate. For those who backed the winner, the message may be all about making the most of one’s assets. Same brand, same product, different message according to political leaning and emotional state. As a point of reference, remember how you felt when President George W. Bush in 2004 and President Obama in 2008 each achieved their respective victories and contrast your feelings each time.