Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Election Strategy, Facebook, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Online Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Yahoo!

I’ve blogged about this before.

The internet can be, in my strongly held opinion, a very effective marketing vehicle for persuasive outreach. Most political media consultants don’t believe this or understand this or want to believe or understand this. Many of them get their consulting fees by putting together television and/or radio commercials and buying media time. They view the internet as a fundraising and grassroots organizing medium.

WebGuild has come up with some telling numbers. So far, in 2008:

Barack Obama has spent $1,000,000 on Google ads.
Hillary Clinton has spent $67,000.

Obama spent $99,341 on Yahoo Web Ads.
Clinton has spent $9,186.

Obama spent $58,000 on Yahoo search ads.
Clinton $0.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zippo.

Obama spent $4,900 on Facebook advertising.
Clinton $0.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zippo.Oh, and on Twitter (this one’s on me):

Barack Obama has 24,188 followers. Barack Obama is following 24, 258 people.
Hillary Clinton has 3078 followers. Hillary Clinton is following 0 people.

WebGuild then goes on to point out that the Clinton didn’t pay internet related firms a penny for February ‘08.  Don’t know if that’s because they didn’t have any scheduled payments or they just didn’t fork over any payments period.  IN that same time , the Obama campaign paid internet consultants $93, 162.

But wait!  Her campaign ended up paying her ad consultants $997,000 and her media consultants $2,540,000.

Joe Trippi is right.  Hillary Clinton’s campaign is the last campaign of the 20th century.  Hopefully.

No Comments » Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, A-List Bloggers, Abraham Harrison LLC, Activating Bloggers, Blog Messaging, Blog Strategy, Blogads Advertising, Blogger Activation, Blogger Effect, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogosphere, Blowback, Election Strategy, Online Polling, Online Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Popular Culture

I don’t understand how certain story submissions pass the smell test.

In a release yesterday, Reuters reports, in an article written by Ellen Wulfhorst, that “Most Americans Don’t Read Political Blogs”. No shit. There is so much wrong with this article that I barely know where to start.

The story was based on a poll by Harris Interactive that found “Only 22 percent of people responding to the poll said they read blogs regularly, meaning several times a month or more, according to the survey conducted by Harris Interactive.”

First of all, it attempts to frame the story right in headline. I think most people, or perhaps more importantly, most online political types would not be surprised of the fact that most adults don’t read political blogs. I don’t know of one legitimate consultant who has said otherwise.

It then says “only” 22 percent of American adults regularly political blogs - meaning several times per month. I don’t know why the word “only” is used. It creates bias, making the number appear to be paltry.

You then have to go the second page of the article to find that this was strictly an online poll. That means the whole spin of the poll is skewed. It’s not about “most adult Americans”, it’s “most online adult Americans”…making that 22% actually SMALLER. And an online poll is self-selected, which skews it even further. In what direction is anybody’s guess.

But if we stick with what we’ve got - that 22% of online adults who responded to this poll regularly read political blogs, we’re looking at an impressive figure. More than 1 in 5 of these Americans get at least part of their political information from blogs. Blogs that are conversational. Blogs that are opinionated. Nothing to sneeze at.

No Comments » Posted on March 12th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Election Strategy, Online Ads, Online Advertising, Political Strategy, Web Ads, Web Advertising, Web Strategy

In showing a sharp contrast that reflects the different mindsets of the campaigns of the two remaining Democratic candidates, Kate Kay of MediaPost writes:

Senator Barack Obama wants voters in Texas and Ohio to vote early, and his campaign is running huge video-enabled billboard ads to promote the convenient option. Yet, despite a desperate need to beat her Democratic opponent in the two states in Tuesday’s primaries, Senator Hillary Clinton’s camp doesn’t seem to be running Web display ads at all.

Not for anything, but one of the complaints about the Clinton campaign is that hit has been too top down. To me, this is another reflection of that. Now, it seems she is running negative ads versus Obama, a somewhat necessary tactic but hardly inspirational.

Web ads don’t necessarily show dispersed control. But the lack of them shows me that a campaign is run by traditioanlists who see TV and direct mail as the only way to go. TV and direct mail are vital, but not as vital as they used to be.

Obama’s team is smartly placing ads on newspaper sites. Like here. And here. Truth be told, they’re not great ads. They show reconstituted TV ads - a bad idea. But at least they’re doing something.

No Comments » Posted on March 3rd, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Cult of Personality, Election Strategy, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Polling Strategy, Popular Culture, Social Graphs, Social Meda, Social Media Index, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social News, Twitter

I’ve been looking at the graph that Twitter has given us for candidate mentions on Super Tuesday.

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The first thing that jumps out at me is the dominance of Barack Obama. The entire time he is the most mentioned candidate. At no time throughout the entire day is he overtaken by anyone else. What does this mean? I’m not sure. Is it because of popularity or is it because of the newsworthiness of his candidacy? Obviously, it’s some sort of combination.

What’s also interesting is the person with the second highest peak: Mike Huckabee. He’s been dissed by the mainstream media ever since New Hampshire. To me, that’s a combination of my belief that the mainstream media can’t relate to a evangelical Christian, along with the GOP delegate assignment system of winner take all. He’s done better in votes and on Twitter than most would be willing to give credit.

Hillary and McCain show no strength. That’s particularly for Clinton. You’d think she’s be mentioned more often in discussion regarding Obama. Pehaps this shows she, in comparison was a non-entity.

Here’s a telling stat that may show why:

Barack Obama has 6793 followers and he is following 6661 people.
Hillary Clinton has only 627 followers and is following 0 people.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nobody.

I’m not saying that this is why she is likely to lose the nomination, but I will say it does reflect an overall approach and mentality - a top-down mentality - that has just about killed her chances to be the next president of the United States.

1 Comment » Posted on February 27th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Cult of Personality, Election Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Polling Strategy, Popular Culture, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, Youth Market

techPresident’s got a potentially telling compilation of stats regarding overall internet activity involving John McCain’s candidacy. In short, it doesn’t bode well for the Republican frontrunner. These stats were taken before the ridiculous NYTimes story that caused an uproar.Candidate Website Traffic

Presumably, website visits show the level of interest that people have in learning more about a candidate, their background, and their stances on issues. I’d say a candidate’s site serves as the anchor of the entire online operation. Hitwise tallied the total number of visits to the three remaining GOP candidates - McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul - and divided them up percentage wise. Here’s what they got:

Huckabee 50%
McCain 26%
Paul 25%

Now let’s take a look at the how all the candidates of both parties stack up against one another:

Barack Obama 44%
Hillary Clinton 26%
Mike Huckabee 16%
Ron Paul 8%
John McCain 8%
Mike Gravel 1%

McCain has gotten half of what his now leading primary opponent is getting. He’s getting less that one-third of what Hillary Clinton is getting. And Barack Obama, his likely opponent in the general election, is getting over 500% more visits.

Read more…

2 Comments » Posted on February 25th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

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