• by Kate Kaye , August 9, 2004

This year's race for the White House is neck-and-neck. But polls suggest there's a dark horse who could tighten the contest even more. And he's using the Web to achieve name recognition and help fuel funding for TV ads.

The campaign for Libertarian presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, aims to convince supporters to donate $500 each to sponsor one television ad run, and is doing so by attracting site visitors through ads on blogs and local online newspapers in battleground states. The campaign is currently running TV ads in the key swing state of New Mexico, where campaign organizers believe the candidate and his running mate, Richard Campagna, could have an effect on the outcome of November's election.

According to Stephen Gordon, communications director for Badnarik/Campagna 2004, the campaign ran ads for about one week beginning in mid-July on politically-focused Web logs including EdCone.com, MyDD and The Raw Story, as well as Reason Online and its affiliated blog, Hit and Run. The campaign also ran a banner ad on the pro-gun rights site Keep and Bear Arms.

"We clearly will continue with the blog ads, but will shift to a direct fundraising approach," explained Gordon after the campaign's experimental blog ad run had completed. He says the blog ads, initially intended to build name recognition for the candidate, garnered 0.4 to 0.5 percent click-through rates on average, and went as high as 0.8 percent on EdCone.com.

Badnarik/Campagna 2004 has extended its ad run on EdCone.com, a personal blog written by Ed Cone, senior writer at Ziff Davis Media. The ad currently running on the site presents Badnarik as "The Peace Candidate" and reads, "Bush spoiler? Miracle Man? Win either way."

"I think he chose a good cross-section of sites,' observed Henry Copeland, CEO of Blogads, an ad network of blog sites. Still, he suggests that the Badnarik campaign focus more specifically on Libertarian-leaning blogs in the future. "There are around twenty different Libertarian blogs that have strong readerships," noted Copeland.

In addition to advertisers placing ads in support of presidential campaigns for Kerry-Edwards, Bush-Cheney, Ralph Nader and the Constitution Party candidate, Michael Peroutka, the official Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign has purchased ads on Blogads sites in past months. "The 'blogosphere' is like a zoo," explained Copeland. "It's got monkeys and zebras and elephants and donkeys. When you're looking for those niche species, it's the ideal hunting ground."

According to Web traffic measurement firm, Alexa, the number of users reached by the Badnarik.org site yesterday (40 out of one million users) exceeded that of VoteNader.org (15 out of one million users), and VoteCobb.org, the site dedicated to the Cobb-LaMarche '04 Green Party presidential campaign which reached a negligible amount of users per one million). In addition, while Badnarik.org's reach is up 642 percent in the past three months, and VoteCobb.org's has risen 583 percent, VoteNader.org's reach has dropped 41 percent in that time period.

As featured in a study conducted during June and July by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut for the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute and 2004 Elections Project, Badnarik could shave votes from both Kerry and Bush in the Upper Midwest. Also, it has been reported recently that pollster John Zogby declared that Badnarik could attract as much as 1 percent of the presidential vote, which Zogby believes could have an effect on the election's outcome.

Besides making direct appeals for TV ad donations, Badnarik/Campagna 2004 has challenged its e-mail subscribers to pay specifically for ads on blog sites of their choosing. It "turned out to be an effective grassroots fundraising strategy," explained Gordon. The campaign has also employed Google keyword bids as part of its online plans.

Overall, David Abel, editor and general manager at online political resource site, PoliticsOnline, believes that third-party candidates must use more unorthodox approaches in order to get noticed on the Web. Abel suggests lesser-known candidates spur viral buzz using controversial and engaging Web animations and streaming films along the lines of JibJab Media's "This Land" or America Coming Together's short film "Straight Talk" starring Will Ferrell.

"A lot of candidates are running presidential campaigns as if they want to get noticed in 2000," Abel opined. "They need to run a campaign that's kind of on the edge, like an insurgent would do."