• by Kate Kaye , September 13, 2004

This may be the one John Kerry flip-flop you won't hear about on conservative talk radio. Following a July online ad run of over 72.5 million impressions, the John Kerry For President campaign practically shut down its Web advertising efforts in August, running a relatively paltry total of 71,000 impressions according to Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance.

In comparison to the enormous percentage drop in ads by the Democrats, the Republicans kept on a slightly more even track from July to August. Together, the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and the Republican National Committee ran more than 8.7 million online ad impressions in August, up from the 1.4 million run by both organizations combined in July. AdRelevance numbers show the Democratic National Committee lying low in July and finally running just 10,000 impressions during the last week of August, divided equally between The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the National section of The New York Times.

The Kerry campaign is "missing opportunities," laments Jonah Seiger, founding partner at Connections Media LLC, a Democratic-leaning political consulting firm. Still, he presumes the volume of impressions placed by the Republicans in August "is a burst around the convention."

Tht boost in ad buys by the Kerry and Bush campaigns--in July and August, respectively--were most likely timed to solicit last-minute contributions before the official candidate nominations took place at the party conventions, at which point the campaigns could no longer accept donations. The Democratic National Convention was held July 26-29 this year; the Republican National Convention took place from August 30-September 2.

While the Kerry campaign ran 72.554 million impressions on a variety of sites in July, including PlanetOut.com, CNN.com, and the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, more than 75 percent of the ads were placed on The New York Times, MSNBC.com, The Washington Post, and Yahoo! News. The following month, the Kerry camp shunned Web advertising, running a total of 71,000 impressions in August on MSN Autos, The Washington Post, Yahoo! GeoCities, and Yahoo! Groups.

Left-leaning "527" groups also did some online lifting for the Dems in July and August. Voter mobilization outfit America Coming Together ran over 4.5 million ad impressions on Salon.com, CNN.com, SF Gate, The New York Times, and The Sports Network. MoveOn.org maintained its habit of running ads on RollingStone.com in July; the liberal organization ran 8,000 impressions there that month, according to AdRelevance. The group added Salon.com to the Web mix in August, running the bulk of 351,000 ads on the site.

The Bush campaign in July ran 1.326 million ad impressions on FoxNews.com, The Washington Post, Yahoo! GeoCities, About.com, and Web hosting site, 50 Megs; over 1.3 million went to FoxNews.com. FoxNews.com visitors received the most attention from the Bush campaign in August as well, accounting for over 5.7 million impressions of the 5.883 million impressions placed on FoxNews.com, EarthLink, The Washington Post and Yahoo! GeoCities.

The RNC ran a total of 87,000 impressions on laddie-mag FHM.com and Web-page building site Tripod in July. The committee bumped up its Web efforts in August, buying space on RushLimbaugh.com, The Washington Times, The New York Post Online Edition, Forbes.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Christian site Crosswalk.com, and Connecticut-based newspaper site, TheDay.com. Of the total 2.847 million impressions run by The RNC in August, more than 1 million impressions each ran on RushLimbaugh.com and The New York Post Online Edition.

"The RNC is clearly trying to capture the attention of evangelicals," opines Matt Leonardo, partner at conservative political consulting firm Alfano-Leonardo, adding that the committee is "clearly in turnout mode." He says the campaign was likely designed to appeal to, as well as garner donations from, the Republican base.

Some expect online ads from the Bush and Kerry campaigns and the RNC and DNC to dwindle in the coming weeks. "You tend to see numbers drying up after the conventions with political campaigns," suggests Mark Ryan, senior director of analysis at Nielsen//NetRatings. He explains that AdRelevance tracks the top 1,000 most trafficked Web sites as well as other sites using multiple machines that constantly surf the Web and capture ad data.

"We may have seen a peak" in August, comments Connections Media's Seiger. Alfano-Leonardo's Leonardo agrees that The Republican convention was "a good opportunity to capture people's attention at that point;" however, he foresees that rather than tapering off, the Republicans will steadily continue their online ad buys.

"Plans are being evaluated [by Bush-Cheney '04] for September and October as to what is going on regarding Internet advertising," says John Durham, President of Pericles Consulting LLC, the agency behind the Bush campaign's Web advertising efforts. Overall, observes Durham, "I still think it's a TV election."