• by Kate Kaye , March 12, 2004

As the presidential political season kicks into high gear, the ads are already making headlines--and not just the TV ads. President Bush's re- election campaign caused a stir last month when it sent a video email to 6 million supporters maligning his likely Democratic rival Senator John Kerry. The Kerry campaign has been experimenting too, running video ads on Web destinations such as Time Warner's CNN.com and America Online.

However, the political streaming ad landscape remains about as sparsely populated as the House Chamber on a Friday afternoon in July. "Political advertisers are usually about two years behind marketers," observes Adrienne Skinner, strategic account director at Yahoo! Although no political streaming ads have run on Yahoo! yet, this could change, she insists, "literally within the next two weeks."

"Video is conducive to political campaign goals," says Jason Krebs, VP-sales and marketing for the New York Times Digital's NYTimes.com. "It's about selling an image as much as selling the cause." NYTimes.com has been in discussions with the Bush and the Kerry camps, each of which is receptive to streaming advertising, according to Krebs.

Yahoo! and NYTimes.com both have established relationships with Eyewonder and Klipmart, providers of streaming technologies that don't require plug-ins.

As Rob Hurlburt, owner and creative director of Sovrenti--a creative agency serving Christian clients--explains it, he had little choice but to use primarily new media like streaming video in the campaign he developed for John Devine. In his bid for U.S. Congress, Texas state District Judge Devine was not only going up against multimillion-dollar campaigns with his budget of $250,000, he was battling an unsophisticated image. Hoping to demonstrate technical prowess, the campaign sent CD-ROMS featuring video content to voters in past Republican primaries. It also ran Flash-based video ads on the Austin-American Statesman newspaper site and its online entertainment guide Austin360.com, in conjunction with a "very small" TV and radio buy. Devine moved up in the polls from sixth to second place during the campaign, and came in third in the election. Despite the loss, Hulbert affirms: "There's no doubt that for the money we spent [the streaming ads] were an incredible deal."

While big-name candidates are embracing streaming video on their sites, not many have done Web video ads. The Kerry campaign has dabbled in Internet video advertising, however. It recently ran a skyscraper video ad on AOL City Guide and CNN Money that enabled viewers to register directly in the ad for campaign emails. A new 80-second Internet video ad recently launched on Kerry's campaign site, which also features re-purposed TV spots and other video footage.

The majority of candidates running streaming ads simply re-purpose television spots for the Web. "Taking a TV spot and slapping it on the Web is not all that effective," contends Bill Caspare, director of political services integration at streaming technology company Klipmart.

Caspare's interactive political marketing firm, db associates, now merged with Klipmart, worked with the streaming company in 2002 to develop audio banner ads for Jim Irvin, candidate for corporation commissioner in Arizona. In wooing political advertiser clients, Klipmart promotes ad capabilities that enhance streaming audio and video, such as database capture and polling features that can help candidates determine which issues are most important to voters in particular regions. Klipmart CEO Chris Young claims the firm gets three to five calls each week from "top-line campaigns." The company forecasts a push from so-called 527 groups during the last month of the campaign. "That's when the issues will be brought out and will be more of a factor," suggests Caspare.

NYTimes.com's Krebs isn't sure that political advertisers want to modify their television messages too much. "I don't know they'd feel as comfortable with adjusting their message by the medium," he reasons.

In addition to providing an additional inexpensive outlet through which to disseminate already produced TV spots, publishers like NYTimes.com and Yahoo! can turn around streaming campaigns in about a day. "We're dealing with folks who have immediate needs," emphasizes Yahoo's! Skinner. "The last thing they want to worry about is scheduling ads online."