e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Political and Issue Advertising on Hulu

November 22nd, 2009

Interesting email in from Campus Progress the other day — as part of a student loan reform campaign, they’re running ads both on cable and on the TV/video-viewing website Hulu. The email itself focuses on encouraging recipients to watch the ad and spread the YouTube version virally via Facebook and Twitter, though it also includes a carefully couched fundraising ask as well (obviously not as much of a priority when you’re sending to college students). The landing page fits the email perfectly, with prominent post-to-Facebook-and-Twitter links plus an email-Congress (and presumably list-building) angle as well.

The ad itself is relatively fun (S.O.B. = “students over banks”), but the Hulu aspect is interesting on its own, particularly because the ads are apparently geo-targeted as well. On a panel we shared last spring, Josh Koster talked about the ever-increasing amount of ad inventory becoming available on video websites, and I suspect that many more-traditional media consultants will “get” the idea of advertising on a site like Hulu, which shows TV programs, a lot more naturally than they will Google Ads. Keep an eye out — we should see even more video ads for candidates and issues on Hulu and similar sites in the months to come.

– cpd