Featur e
men reported receiving the message than reported seeing the medium through which the message was transmitted. One of the most common criticisms offered by detrac-
tors of the effectiveness of online advertising for politi- cal campaigns is based on a standard survey question on campaign surveys asking respondents if they have seen, read, or heard something about Candidate A’s campaign, and then ask where the respondent got that information. Respondents to such surveys tend to name online ads less frequently as a source of information about the campaign, regardless of how much is spent on online advertising. However, our findings seem to indicate that people
lose recall of the source of the information they receive from online ads rather quickly and retain just the infor- mation, which is in line with what practitioners know and academics write about the cycle negative advertising. As such, data indicates that the standard seen/read/heard question used frequently by campaign pollsters is not a good indicator of the effectiveness of digital ads.
THE ONLINE BUY The vendor who created and placed the online adver- tising was CampaignGrid, the largest online advertising platform dedicated exclusively to political campaigns and causes.
The firm placed several different types of on-
line advertising including banner ads placed on general interest, social media, news, entertainment, email portals and political sites as well as Google search text ads. Grid
CAMPAIGN GRID TARGETING TECHNIQUES CampaignGrid used several forms of targeting to reach Republican men.
targeted registered voters using its proprietary voter data driven ad platform to burn in the message to first time viewers of the ad, and re-targeted people who clicked on the ads and visited the campaign’s website. CampaignGrid managed more than 140 online cam- paigns nationwide during the 2010 cycle, including 76 general election races, among them Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell for U.S. Senate in Delaware, and Richard Burr for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, as well as 55 House races and 9 local races. The buy for the Florida campaign yielded more than 14 million impressions over 8 days, or an average of 1.8 million impressions/day. The advertising buy was back- loaded, so voters in the last days of the campaign would see more impressions than they saw in the first days of the buy. Following is a chart of impressions per day: For perspective on the size of the buy and the pac- ing of impressions, the Prendergast campaign was above the mean among CampaignGrid’s total client base when measured in terms of impressions per day, but was below the mean in terms of total impressions. This latter mea- surement is largely because of the length of the campaign. The final three days, on an impression-per-day basis, was considerably above the mean.
34 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
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