This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Featur e


How Online Ads Move Votes In Political Campaigns


A Case Study Of Florida’s 11Th Congressional District In The 2010 Election Cycle By The California Group


However, projections for 2010 showed that online ads would make up less than 1% of all campaign advertising dollars spent, but the same digital media was predicted to outpace in 2010 the 12.9% market share it comprised in the commercial world in 2009. Campaigns, with their constrained budgets and restrict- ed time frames, can ill-afford to spend money on a me- dium that does not give high impact. On the other hand, when engaged in a zero-sum competition, can campaigns afford to not use a medium that gives an advantage, even a small one? Prior to the advent of the Internet, the most advanced technology in voter contact came with the use of televi- sion. Perhaps one of the first, and still one of the most famous, impactful television commercials was the Lyndon B. Johnson “Daisy” commercial of 1964. Ironically it only aired once as a campaign commercial, but aired hundreds of times on television newscasts. The Internet has yet to have such a moment.


S Despite the early impact of TV commercials such as


“Daisy,” it wasn’t until nearly twenty years later that politi- cal consultants were able to fully quantify the impact of television commercials on public opinion. This study was modeled after efforts in the early eighties in California and elsewhere that refined the use of television commercials for political purposes. California, with its large campaign budgets and twelve distinct media markets, lent itself to such experimentation. The 1982 Pete Wilson for U.S. Senate campaign against then ex-governor and now current governor Jerry Brown was at the forefront of these efforts. The Wilson campaign tested a unique message in a distinct market. A unique message is defined as a message not being used in that me- dia market in any other medium. A distinct media market might be one such as Fresno or Monterrey that, at the time, did not get broadcast stations from any other market. The Wilson campaign conducted a baseline poll of the awareness of the message in that market. An example


32 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition


tudies show that political campaigns spend consid- erably less on online advertising as a percentage of their total ad buy than do commercial advertisers.


might be “Do you agree or disagree with the statement ‘Jerry Brown is soft on crime,’” which, for the sake of ar- gument, might get a 25% agreement. Then the campaign would run television ads illustrating that Jerry Brown was soft on crime in the media market and use tracking polls to assess the results. The Wilson campaign found that once you put 600


gross rating points of media behind an ad – that is to say, once you aired an ad a sufficient number of times that everyone in the market had theoretically seen the ad six times – it “moved numbers.” To move numbers might mean that a later poll would show a 35% agreement with the agree/disagree question.


In political parlance, the


change in voters’ opinions about Brown’s stance on crime would be called “burning in the message.” The standard is now 1000 gross rating points, owing to the public’s in- creased resistance over the last thirty years to political mes- saging, fracturing of the national consciousness with cable TV and the internet, and in general the stronger compet- ing demands for Americans’ attention in 2010 vs. 1982.


EXPERIMENTAL METHOD & SURVEY METHODOLOGY George Gorton was the lead consultant on the Pete Wil- son for U.S. Senate campaign in 1982. In 2010, Google contracted with Gorton’s firm, The California Group, to adapt the methodology used in the television era to the Internet. Gorton hired Steven Moore, a pollster with ex- perience in large-scale, non-traditional polling and a pio- neer in online advertising for political purposes, to help with the study. Florida’s 11th


Congressional District was home to a sec-


ond term Democratic incumbent defending against a long shot GOP challenger in a fairly strong Democratic district. Mike Prendergast, a retired Army colonel, ran against Rep. Kathy Castor. The Prendergast campaign agreed to use a unique, neg-


ative message. A “unique, negative message” is a message that a) was being used only online; the message was not being used


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62