e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Online Advocacy Tools: Advertising

June 19th, 2008

New Online Politics 101 Chapter

If I had to pick a most-neglected aspect of internet politics, it would be online advertising. In particular, electoral campaigns spend relatively little money advertising to web audiences, particularly compared to the huge amounts they raise online. While it’s typical for commercial marketing campaigns to spend 15% or 20% of their budgets online, for political campaigns the comparable range would be 3% to 5%. This seems particularly strange considering the targetability of online advertising (the ‘net naturally breaks down into demographic and interest-based niches) as well as its trackability.

The internet’s main rivals as communications channels (general-audience broadcast advertising, phonebanking/robocalls and direct mail) are all gradually losing effectiveness as a result of a variety of factors including increased competition for viewer attention, cable channel proliferation, cell phone ubiquity, and overall junk-mail resistance. Despite these trends, most campaign professionals are happy to raise money over the ‘net but are rarely willing to recycle much of it back into online advertising. That situation may change (as of this writing, several of the 2008 presidential campaigns have spent a substantial amount advertising online), but for now a combination of factors seem to be slowing down the acceptance of online advertising in the campaign world.

First, online advertising is often hard to do, particularly if you’re going beyond basic Google Ads and Blogads. Running display ads (static banners or more complex Flash/video/interactive pieces) is much more difficult than it should be, in part because different publications can have vastly different standards (I can remember one time doing three different versions each of four online ads, one set for the NY Times site, one set for Washington Post properties and one at standard 468×60 banner size for National Journal) and in part because ads can’t be ordered from a single central broker. Television and print ads, by contrast, are done in standard formats and sizes and ad agencies can usually purchase space in many outlets at once.

And therein lies the second part of the problem — professional campaign consultants in the U.S. have generally taken a cut of their clients’ TV spending as a commission for placing their ads, and the industry hasn’t worked out a similarly profitable business model for online political advertising. Pressure is coming, though — the ‘08 campaigns have broken down a lot of barriers, and consultants are also being pushed more often into lump-sum channel-neutral contracts that don’t discriminate as much against the ‘net.

Basic Types of Online Advertising

Regardless of whether they’re used to elect a candidate or promote an issue, online ads today break down into three basic categories.

Display Ads

Display ads are the descendents of the banner ads that sprang up everywhere during the first dot-com boom, but the family has now expanded to include sophisticated video pieces, Flash animations, database interactions and “floating” pop-overs. Display ads are also in no way new to political advocacy, since I can remember the original incarnation of epolitics.com making money (through a political ad network) from Lockheed-Martin ads for the F-22 during a defense funding fight in the late ’90s. As mentioned above, display ads often have to be tailored to the particular requirements of a given website or publisher, particularly if they include higher-end features.

Also depending on the publisher, display ads can be targeted at particular site users, particularly on sites like web portals and social networks (Facebook, MySpace) as well as newspapers and others that collect financial, demographic and usage data on their readers. An advertiser on Washington Post web properties, for instance, can aim ads at employees of particular federal agencies, showing them only to readers coming from the selected .gov domain(s). Of course, advertisers can target by interest as well as by demographics, running ads only on special-interest sites or on special-interest sections of mass-audience and news sites.

We should note right away the obvious application of databases to the question of online targeting, something covered in more detail in the chapter on political databases. Also note that some forms of offline political communications also benefit from similar kinds of targeting, since the explosion of cable channels naturally encourages targeting by interest — also note that “cable” channels delivered by actual cable rather than by satellite are also often geotargetable by zip code or neighborhood. Radio also breaks down by region and by demographic, and direct mail is a well-known a haven for database nerds who dream of slicing and dicing consumer data (more in the chapter on Political Databases).

Contextual (Google) Ads

Another common online advertising channel deploys text ads on web pages based on the content of those pages. Google Ads are the classic example, with ads being served based on each unique search query, but Google now also sells tex ads on thousands of sites across the web, and similar ad networks have sprung up as well. Contextual ads have proven to be very effective for both commercial and political advertisers, with easy and obvious targeting based on a variety of factors including keyword and reader location. Most also feature easy testing of alternative ad message/keyword combinations and the ability to change ads and ad runs mid-stream. Nonprofits can apply for Google Grants to receive free Google Ads, which a number of groups have used to build their supporter and donor lists.

To get the most out of contextual ads, testing and tracking are usually vital. Since ads on a particular page are arranged and emphasized based on the amount each advertiser has “bid” to purchase those keywords, a campaign may be able to reach more people for the same amount of money by advertising on more-specific queries. For instance, advertising on the word “outdoors” is likely to be expensive, since lots of different retailers, outfitters and advocacy groups will be competing for it. Advertising on “alternative fuel biodiesel,” on the other hand, will probably be much cheaper, and its superior targeting may also yield better results per-ad-viewed.

Two other considerations about Google and other contextually targeted ad systems: first, if you target well, they’ll reach people at the moment when they’re potentially interested in your subject, since they’re either searching for it or they’re on a page that’s somehow related. Second, Google ads have a secondary branding effect, since they put your message in front of web searchers and readers regardless of whether they actually click on them. Some research has even shown that it’s beneficial to have a Google Ad show up on a page that also has your site in the organic Google search results — if a page contains both your ad and your link in the Google search results, more people click on your link, as if the ad somehow delivered extra visibility or credibility.

Blog Ads

A final ad channel particularly commonly used in the political world involves specialized advertising on blogs, either through the Blogads.com site or through another blog advertising network. These ads are naturally targeted based on each blog’s particular niche, and ads on specialized sites such as local or regional political blogs frequently reach very influential audiences at a low relative cost. For more, see the chapter on Blogs and Blogger Relations.

Targeted vs. Blanket Advertising

We’ve talked a lot about targeting online advertising, but why not simply push out lots of ads to popular but non-targeted and non-political sites? Absolutely, why not? Some campaigns and consultants have gotten quite good results from bulk appeals on mainstream consumer and media sites. Shotgunning cheap ads out into the aether often fails, though — ads inexpensive enough to buy and deliver in massive amounts are also more likely to be bland enough to get lost in the online clutter.

Landing Pages

One final consideration — the ad itself is only the first part of the battle, since once someone clicks on your link, what happens next? Ideally, they’d jump to a highly targeted landing page that is conceptually and/or visually linked to the particular ad that they clicked on, and that also clearly steers them in the direction you want. For instance, political campaigns frequently push people to volunteer sign-up or donations pages, while advocacy groups will often promote email-your-Congressmember campaigns and similar political actions. In the 2008 cycle, we’ve seen landing pages deliver video messages, help people find their polling places, promote house parties and even encourage donations to outside causes like disaster-relief.

Next: SMS Text Messaging/Cellphones

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