Archive for July, 2007
Two articles in today’s Post (which I read sitting on my front stoop on this most perfect summer Sunday morning) illuminate very different ends of the spectrum of online political activity.
First, a front-page story profiles Greg Letiecq, local Prince William County, Virginia blogger and political activist, who helped write that county’s new anti-immigrant policies. Though described by critics as a “schoolyard bully” and a practitioner of “yellow journalism,” Letiecq sees himself as an heir to the political pamphleteering tradition and as someone not afraid to pull punches. I agree with the guy on, well, just about nothing, but I have to be impressed with the way he’s translated opionion, attitude and an eye for local news into real political power. Though I searched his site in vain for much evidence of the “media-savvy” “video, photos and snazzy graphics” cited by reporter Nick Miroff.
Next up, Jose Antonio Vargas, the paper’s designed online politics guy, travels to California to hang out at Google, the center of the technology world — and a popular stop on the presidential campaign trail. In town hall-style meetings with big groups of company employees,
The candidates learn about products such as Google Earth, a satellite imaging program; get an introduction to what’s referred to as the company’s Googley culture; and discuss a wide range of topics (atheism, Russian relations, Internet access in Africa) in hour-long sessions that can seem a long way from Iowa and New Hampshire.
One problem: Googlers seem to expect substance, not sound bites (they’re so needy). McCain, Hillary, Edwards and tech favorite Ron Paul all stop by to say howdy, though Paul’s global warming skepticism was not well received by an audience more sympathetic to other parts of his libertarian mindset. More on Google’s political influence.
– cpd
July 22nd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
In an online discussion today, Bill Pease with Convio wrote a great overview of how email messages get marked as spam and how you can avoid having yours consigned to that awful fate. Basic message: just as in high school, a Bad Reputation means trouble. Bill’s kindly allowed me to reprint his comments, so let’s geek out on email for a few minutes.
Here’s my take on various spam scoring systems:
1) Unless your organization’s email content regularly involves
commercial-sounding language (e.g., you are selling products in an
estore, or promoting services provided by affinity marketers),
content-only spam scoring systems are of relatively limited utility.
Content characteristics are generally a minor component of the
commercial or ISP filtering systems that control access to most of your
supporters’ inboxes. Given that, there is not a lot of ROI on the
effort required to tweak messages to avoid the key words or graphical
features that content-only systems identify as “spammy.”
(more…)
July 20th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
According to the Times, Google has expanded the number of newspapers in its Print Ads project from 50 to 225 — and opened it up to all advertisers using AdWords. In a limited test since last November, the system now includes papers from Hearst, Gannett, The New York Times Company, Scripps and others, and Google claims that it will reach up to 30 million readers in all but three of the top 35 print media markets. Coming up? College papers and alternative newsweeklies.
Just as with Google radio ads, advertisers order print ads in papers throughout the country using a web interface and upload them as digital files, in this case PDFs. Newspapers benefit by filling space that would otherwise have gone to waste — generally used for default ads for their own features — while Google of course siphons off a little of the sugar. Papers have the right to reject ads based on content, just as they would with an ad ordered through their own staff.
I don’t see this as quite as significant in political terms as Google Audio, but it still should be handy for candidates and outside interest groups. It’s yet another way in which the web is making it easier to coordinate offline activity — translating the Internet’s low barriers to entry into the physical world. Via MarketingVOX.
– cpd
July 19th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Okay, maybe not tawdry, but certainly cheap: writing for Laura Quinn at Idealware, Alan Rosenblatt (newly of the Center for American Progress) has put together an excellent overview of low-cost online advocacy tools. Need to reach supporters via cell phone? Alan’s got some options. Promoting via social media and social news? Ditto. Want to build a social network? You’re probably crazy to compete with Facebook, MySpace, etc., but if you want to give it a run, he’ll show you where to go. And he’ll steer you toward existing networks on which you can piggyback your issues as well. Overall, a great overview of these topics and a lot more — I reviewed an earlier version of the article and learned a ton. This one’s a keeper.
– cpd
July 19th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
It almost sneaked up and caught me unawares, but guess what: e.politics launched one year ago today. Happy Birthday to us! Some of you have been regular readers from the very beginning (note: you need a new hobby) and some of you are new to the fun, but I’m damn glad to have all of you along for the ride. Really, I can’t tell you what a blast it’s been writing this site and getting to know a bunch of you kids over the last 12 months.
Goals for the next year? Let’s go for the usual: world conquest, adoring groupies, and lots of time for all e.pol contributors and commentors to recline on a couch and be fed grapes. To recharge for the march ahead, I’ve taken the last few days off from writing, but be warned: more e.politics is right around the corner. In the meantime, let’s look at the numbers, last updated four months into the life of the site:
(more…)
July 17th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Cross-posted on techPresident
Neilsen has published some fascinating details on how the presidential candidates are spending their media money and what kind of results they’re getting for it. MarketingCharts.com has the numbers; here are some highlights:
- Romney and Hunter were the first on television, but Hunter ran very few spots while Romney had slapped over 4500 ads on the air as of June 11th — more than the other candidates combined. Richardson had led Dems on tv, but since early June, Dodd, Edwards and Obama have also jumped on local television in battleground states. Not surprisingly, advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire dominates the total.
- Romney’s also been on local radio, but not as much as Guiliani, who’d run more than twice as many radio ads as of June 1. Interesting note: Rudy’s scattered his around the country rather than concentrating on early primary states.
- Dems dominate online buzz, and despite running no online advertising, Obama received more blog discussion and more site visits and visitors than any other candidate. Hillary Clinton’s site ranked second in traffic.
- Romney is the only candidate to purchase a significant number of cable tv ads as of June 1. Dodd also bought some cable time, but only four spots.
- As has been previously reported, McCain has led in the use of search and display advertising online (26 million impressions in April alone), which may have helped him get more site traffic than any other Republican. Still, the three leading Dems’ sites all got more visitors than his, and Romney was “a distant sixth” in the overall rankings.
Get more details here and from Neilsen’s site; thanks to MarketingVox for the tip.
– cpd
July 11th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Cross-posted on techPresident
At last week’s New Organizing Institute/IPDI-sponsored Google presentation on advocacy tools, after looking at Google Ads and answering questions about click fraud, the company’s Elections and Issue Advocacy team touched on a new tool whose potential political significance jumped out at me. More than a year ago, Google snapped up a company that was developing an online interface for buying radio advertising, and despite some skepticism about its usefulness, the product looks to be moving out of beta fairly soon.
You can get a good overview of how the ordering system will work here; note that you can specify stations by location and genre, set your own budget, choose your time of day to run ads and get some reporting after-the-fact. You upload your own ads as mp3s, though the site will help you find a company to build them if necessary. Groovy! Basically, you can run ads across the country from a single interface — you won’t need to work with different ad reps for individual stations or chains of stations. With 1600 AM and FM stations in the network, and the top 10 stations in 24 of the 25 biggest media markets in the country, Google claims the potential to reach essentially 100% of the U.S. population.
(more…)
July 10th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Hey kids! Getting things back in order after spending the last few days doing very little that resembled work — the gig went fine, the tubing trip was awesome and the mountain biking kicked ass, thanks for asking. A few articles popped over the break that are worth a quick look in the rearview mirror before we move on:
- First, The Observer turns its binoculars across the pond to gaze upon the spectacle that is online video in the American presidential process. Josh is right that the piece frames the issues with some false dichotomies, of the “Sign of the Apocalypse, or just a humble stain remover?” variety, but it has some good quotes and is joined by a nice top-ten presidential videos compilation. Who can forget Rudy in a dress?
- Next, getting into the nuts and bolts of electronic politics, the Post lifts up the hood on the Romney machine to find the candidate’s data cruncher, an expert at political microtargeting. The article is goes into a great deal of detail about how microtargeting works, but is also careful to note that question exists as to whether the tactic is revolutionary or just “putting a very fine point on the obvious.” Bonus art history metaphor: “If television advertising is painting with broad brush strokes, microtargeting is political pointillism.” Thanks for the tip, Dad.
- Moving from one kind of scary to another, Three Worked the Web to Help Terrorists: British Case Reveals How Stolen Credit Card Data Bought Supplies for Operatives. Using email scams to steal credit cards and online poker sites to launder money is apparently the the new face of jihad.
- Don’t worry, the web may save us before it destroys us, as Brazilian tribes plan to use Google Earth to monitor Amazon rainforests for illegal logging and protect their way of life in the process. Critical choice: Internet first, or running water? For more from the Amazon, see Defending the Hidden Tribes. For more unexpected uses of Google Earth, take a look at this new Chinese ballistic missile submarine, coming soon to an ocean near you.
- Finally, let’s glance at a U.S. News and World Report article that manages to contradict its own title. Though called “The Internet: It’s a potent new tool, but no one’s sure how to use it,” it promptly turns around and demonstrates that campaigns sure as hell SOUND like they know how to use the web: “Even Richardson, who lags far behind in polls, has outpaced Dean’s 2004 high-water marks for online supporters and fundraising.”
That should keep you guys busy while I go turn up the A/C — welcome to summer.
– cpd
July 9th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
At a presentation Thursday by Google’s Elections and Issue Advocacy team, one of the first questions that came up was that of click fraud and Google Ads. Since advertisers pay only when Google Ads are clicked, should campaigns be worried about their opponents clicking away with wild abandon? A few interns or volunteers, for instance, could cost an enemy dearly. Click enough times and they could easily exhaust a campaign’s daily Google Ad budget, denying them not only visits from potential supporters but also the branding effect of a seen-but-unclicked ad.
Google’s team, led by Peter Greenberger, replied that the company believes that it can spot most click fraud easily and will refund money to advertisers who are found to have been a victim. They employ three levels of protection:
- Automatic. The ad management system is designed to raise flags if, for instance, one IP number seems to be generating a large number of clicks on an ad or series of ads.
- Human Analysis. Besides the automatic checks, Google employees also review broad data about click patterns to look for anything odd.
- Reactive Investigation. If you believe you’re being defrauded, for instance after watching your entire day’s ad budget being wiped out at the same time each morning three days in a row, you can get in touch with Google and request an investigation. Again, if fraud turns up, Google won’t count those clicks against you.
Actually, considering how traceable just about everything is on the Internet, campaigns would be silly to launch a systematic click-fraud effort — the victim could go to the press in about two seconds as soon as it was even suspected. Of course, if someone DOES pull that stunt, let me know — you know I love me some dirty tricks.
– cpd
July 7th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Ben Rattray with Change.org wrote in this morning with the news that the organization has developed a Facebook application specifically to enable advocacy in the Facebook universe. How does it work? Once you install the app, you can choose from a variety of causes that others have created or you can make your own.
After you’ve added a cause, it appears in your profile and visitors can click through to view more information. You can also directly invite friends to join the cause, just as you can invite them to add other Facebook apps. Advocacy groups and political campaigns are going to be particularly interested in this feature: causes can be associated with particular nonprofits or candidates, and Facebook users can donate to them directly through the Change.org application. Interestingly, anyone who’s joined a cause can suggest fundraising targets — I just added National Environmental Trust to the list of possible Global Warming beneficiaries, for instance. Coming soon: the ability to run advocacy email campaigns. I asked Ben how that will work, particularly with the various email deliverability issues involving Congress. Here’s his reply:
(more…)
July 3rd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Alan Rosenblatt has put together a very cool “virtual interview” with Amy Rubin, the new media strategist for John Edwards, in which she answers many of the concerns I’d raised last week in a piece about the campaign’s text message-based fundraising effort. In the process, we get a great deal of detail about the considerations behind the successful use of SMS for supporter communications — the Edwards folks seem to have thought this one through really well. And, they’re happy to share the kind of information that campaigns are often reluctant to reveal. Thanks to Amy for being so forthcoming, and of course to Alan for pulling the article together and for providing excellent commentary on her responses.
BTW, an email discussion with Alan about Amy’s mention of the need to provide different channels of communication based on supporters’ preferences was a prod for me to write yesterday’s piece on going where your supporters are.
– cpd
July 3rd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Guest article! Troy Schneider makes the point that new tools let advocacy groups create sophisticated online information presentations, the kind of data- and graphics-rich applications that news organizations have employed to really make a point jump out at a reader. Troy should know of what he speaks: he’s been around the online political world since the halcyon days of PoliticsNow (ah, the mid-90s…) before jumping over to National Journal, where he served as Editor at NationalJournal.com and as Managing Director for Electronic Publishing at the parent Atlantic Media Company. Nowadays, he’s New Media Editor at the New America Foundation, where he’s putting these ideas into practice. Pull you up a chair and hear what he has to say:
Why Think Tanks and Nonprofits Should Be Thinking Like (New Media) Newsrooms
Troy K. Schneider
Cross-posted at TroySchneider.com
Earlier this year, the topic of media outlets bringing programmers into the newsroom generated some interesting discussion (from Tim O’Reilly, Mark Glaser, and others). As O’Reilly put it, “the various jobs of journalism — gathering news, exercising editorial judgment, and presenting the story — can all be augmented by programming. In the new world of network-enabled information gathering and dissemination, programming is as critical a skill as writing and photography.”
(more…)
July 2nd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
People are on the move in the world of electronic advocacy, and we here at e.politics are happy to document it for your pleasure. First off, the departure of the charming and always in-the-know Cheryl Contee for Fleishman Hillard left a yawning void in the upper ranks of Issue Dynamics, and Second Life-enthusiast Kevin Reid has stepped up manfully to Hold The Line as Vice President and head of the company’s Internet consulting division. One role he can’t fill: he’ll never have as cool a ‘do as Ms. Contee is known to sport (blondes do have more fun, after all).
Next up, Alan Rosenblatt, Doktor of Digital Politics and the power behind the Internet Advocacy Center, is leaving Turner Strategies for a new job as Associate Director of Online Advocacy at the Center for American Progress. Now he gets to try out those groovy tactics he’s been talking about all this time — hey Alan, time to do some work for a change. No worries, he won’t be hiding his light completely under a bushel, since he’ll still be writing for Dr. Digipol and techPresident.
Next time you run into any of these folks, just remember, drinks are on them.
– cpd
July 2nd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Some email discussion over the past few days about the Edwards fundraising text/voice campaign and about last Friday’s desktop widget has really brought home to me the importance of going where your supporters are. A few years ago, online activists had only a handful of ways to reach people — to supplement traditional phone-banking, direct mail and television, the Internet really offered only two channels, email and relatively static websites. Since ’04 cycle, which brought both the perfection of email/online fundraising and the rise of blogs, we’ve seen an explosion of new channels, including an array of social networking sites and other online communities. These days, electoral and advocacy campaigns confront so many possible ways to reach potential supporters that it’s dizzying. How do we allocate resources?
(more…)
July 2nd, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Next Posts
