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We don’t get no respect

12 comments on We don’t get no respect

We don’t get no respect

: On the way to the airport this morning (during a Stern commercial break) I heard a report on NPR saying that the Presidential campaigns have spent $300 million on TV advertising and $3 million on internet advertising.

That 100-to-1 ratio makes no sense. It’s just bad business. And it shows that political marketers are criminally out-of-touch with their market.

: Here’s the Pew study:

In sum, while presidential campaigns have stepped up their online fund-raising, voter-profiling, and insider communicating this year, they have not ventured aggressively into online advertising. This is somewhat surprising because online ads can reach new, undecided, and wavering voters in the demographic and geographic niches where they are thought to reside. Online ads would seem to provide a missing link between the campaigns

12 responses to “We don’t get no respect”

  1. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    I guess the question to ask is what % of undecided, likely voters in swing states have Internet access and, if so, how much do they use it. Perhaps TV ads are a better media buy?
    Of course, I doubt the campaigns even did such an analysis, so your point might still be valid.

  2. Ed Cone Avatar
    Ed Cone

    Agreed, with footnotes.
    One, TV is still the mass communicator. I just saw some poll numbers about NC voters, who get most of their info about politics from TV news, with TV commercials high on the list.
    Also, those numbers are skewed by the huge price disparity between TV and the web — $3 million online buys a ton more than a comparable amount on TV.

  3. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Good point on the cost differential, Ed. Ah, the bias of “empirical” data.

  4. steve Avatar
    steve

    I personally think they should spend all $303,000,000.00 on internet advertising. Through judicious use of free software I now NEVER see any advertising on any blog (sorry, Prof. Reynolds); and that includes the newer ones that try to use text rather than images.
    So I say… spend it all on the Internet and I will never see political advertising again!
    :-D
    Realistically… Internet advertising has the issue that it is possible to block it if you know what to do and if it became more prevalent then a lot more people would know how to do it.

  5. ken Avatar
    ken

    Yeah, I’m going to have to go with Ed on this one. Between blogs, email campaigns, grassroots, ridiculously cheap Blogads, I don’t think there’s a NEED to spend $300 million on the Internet. It would be criminal and stupid … almost as criminal and stupid as spending $300 million on TV ads, but that’s different. The fact is, between the $3 million and the help of influencers on blogs and such, the Internet efforts from both sides might serve as an example of EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE advertising.

  6. htom Avatar
    htom

    Implicent recognition that those bright enough to use the internet are much less likely to be good subjects for typical advertising campaigns?

  7. daudder Avatar
    daudder

    you don’t need to advertise if the blogs are carrying your message. NOT advertising makes blogs appear more “objective”.

  8. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    The trend of costs and investments will be fun to watch!

  9. David Crisp Avatar
    David Crisp

    It’s the same reason politicians buy TV ads rather than newspaper ads. People who read, either from dead trees or the ether, are more likely to make up their own minds. TV ads are for people who ignore politics until Nov. 1, then decide they’d better get with it.

  10. billg Avatar
    billg

    Dauder touched on a good point about blogs. Most political blogs are so biased, one way or the other, with a correspondingly biased audience, that it makes little sense to buy ads on their pages. Once people cross the magic threshold and become True Believers, they’re beyond rational discourse.
    Beyond that, how many of you remember the last ad you saw on a web site? How many of you remember the last web ad you actually clicked on?
    Candidates are a whole lot better off buying ads on the morning traffic report or that 30-second spot just before the weather report.

  11. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    “Beyond that, how many of you remember the last ad you saw on a web site? How many of you remember the last web ad you actually clicked on?”
    Remembering back to my marketing undergrad degree: subconscious recall/recognition can be just as important as being able to name the last ad you saw; and its about impressions, not necessarily “clicking-through.”

  12. Ric Locke Avatar
    Ric Locke

    Two words: penetration and ideology.
    We all like to think we’re in the middle of the world, but even people with PCs aren’t majority blog consumers. A lot of my neighbors don’t use the Net for anything but EBay and the like, and never stray to blogs at all — in fact, may not know what they are. On the other hand, it’s a rare individual who doesn’t have the TV on most of the time.
    And blogs aren’t news — they’re handbills, libels in the original sense of the term (yes, I’ve been reading Neil Stephenson :-) There’s nothing wrong with that, but many people don’t bother to read the blogs of the other orientation, and such people miss a lot of the discussion. It doesn’t help that so many of both sides (Kos, the Rottweiler) are seemingly specifically designed to chase anyone who doesn’t Believe into the sea, pursued by demons.
    I do find it interesting that the two biggest Leftie bloggers are paid by various left-organizations, while the Righties are all volunteers, either purely or as spinoffs from right-oriented journalism. Wonder if they counted Moulitsas’s and Black’s salaries in that $3 million. Or Willis’s.
    Regards,
    Ric Locke