• by Jim Meskauskas , October 6, 2004

The cloistered convent of the digerati has been abuzz this week with the latest epistles regarding political advertising online.

MediaPost this week ran a link to a Wired article about Kerry's use of the Web in the wake of last Thursday night's debate.

MediaPost's Center for Media Research then posted a ditty about how the presidential candidates HAVEN'T been using the Web so much. According to the newsletter, Michael Cornfield, in a memo for the Pew Internet & American Life Project, stated that "The presidential campaigns... have virtually ignored the Internet as an advertising medium, according to the first-ever systematic study of online political ads."

The Bush campaign has done very little in the space. According to the Center for Media Research, Kerry has outspent him 3-to-1, but Kerry's activity online has been almost entirely for the purposes of fundraising.

The latest online Kerry effort comes on the heels of last Thursday's debate, an event that put some wind back in the Democrat's sails. The online effort was done, in part to keep up the momentum, and to ensure that the vice presidential debate was watched so that people would see and hear Edwards be tough on his opponent while praising his boss.

The problem with the list of sites mentioned in the Wired piece is that most of their reach will be against the already converted. MSNBC, ESPN, and USAToday are good choices because at least there, audiences can be reached that might not already be on the ABB train (Anybody but Bush), giving the campaign access to potential undecided voters.

The budget mentioned was $400 thousand. This is too small and the media are too focused to make the kind of difference that needs to be made.

There are two groups of people that Kerry can go after in order to try and move the needle on this campaign. He can either do what Karl Rove and Ralph Reed, both Republican strategists, have the Republicans doing: mobilizing the core base. But, this would require Kerry to start being someone he is not very good at being -- a meat-and-potatoes liberal issues guy.

His record is mostly a lesson in political expediency, and his Boston Brahmanism, though not entirely fit, doesn't lean well towards those kinds of issues. Also, let's face it, traditional liberal causes don't play to a large enough base to win on numbers.

The second group is the broad swaths of people who are non-partisan or who don't usually vote. The number of American non-voters is almost 100 million persons. Now, for the first time in 30 years, we have an election in the midst of war. Death and destruction is something that even the most apathetic can get riled up about one way or the other.

First of all, that needs to be the regular message, which is counter to what has traditionally worked for the Dems. They like the health care/ old people/ minorities/ education stuff. But these are different times. The only way to reach this second group with the message, however, is not to scream at him or her shrilly and repeatedly, which is what political television campaigns usually do. They need to appeal to them rationally in a text-based medium. That medium, of course, is the Web.

It's also a fine place to be in order to get in front of the most active influencer: the blogger. I mean, where do you think all those bloggers talking politics and being picked up by the news media spend their time? Watching "The Price is Right" during the day and early news at night? They are on the Internet -- a lot.

Both campaigns should be running more weight online, a medium where they have the best chance to make their money work for them against possible undecided voters.

The deluge of spot TV is already creating enough noise in the medium and heavy TV user. The light TV user is only getting campaign messaging as it is reported by the news. As an audience, they are being widely ignored. According to Karl Rove and Ralph Reed, this election is about mobilizing the base to ensure that a given side has enough numbers at the polls to win. But there are fairly broad swaths of people that really could move the election in either direction. And not a small number of them spend more time online than anywhere else.

Alas, this was the season for the Internet's introduction to political marketing, but not for realizing its full potential as a messaging vehicle. Stay tuned for 2006.