We just got our hands on a preview of tomorrow’s Borrell Associates report, “2008 Outlook: Online Political Advertising,” and even Gordon Borrell admits he was surprised at the results. With $4.8 billion of political ad dollars to spend this year, Borrell forecasts just $20 million for online media — less than .5% of the total (yes, that’s one-half of one percent). And half of that $20 million will be spent on search advertising. “I would have thought it would have been much larger than this,” writes Gordon in an email to Lost Remote. “But in the age of disintermediation, people go directly to candidates’ sites for information, rather than candidates having to pay a lot of money to get their messages out to the public. A lot of that still goes on, of course, in direct mail and broadcasting… but not online.”
I suspected this would be the case a few months ago when I spoke to a media buyer who specializes in political advertising. The message was very clear: the campaigns advertise on search engines and political blogs to drive fundraising. To drive the vote, nothing beats TV, which Borrell predicts will take in a 60 percent share of the total. That isn’t the say local TV sites won’t pick up some political revenue here and there. “Local stations should look at this an opportunity to funnel some of that spending into multi-media packages,” suggests the report. But clearly, no bonanza awaits online.
