Local gets one-tenth of Obama online ad spend
Cory Bergman September 5th, 2008
Out of $5 million in online ad spending so far this year, the Obama campaign has spent just over $3 million on Google and $618,005 on Yahoo. So how did local media fare? $512,551 was spent through Centro, the local online ad agency — so just over 10 percent of the total. Capturing online dollars during election years has always been hit and miss for local media — more miss than hit — largely because the campaigns utilize the web more for fundraising and list-building (so search gets most of the dollars) than “getting out the vote.” TV still dominates as the best emotional reach vehicle around.
7 Comments Add your own
1. tdc | September 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am
tv doesn’t want candidates to move their spend online… it’s the last car of their gravy train yet to jump the tracks.
2. wtf | September 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am
A few thoughts:
1) 1st of all this is actually great news that ‘we’ actually landed 10%. This has to be way up from 4 years ago.
2) News sites are the PERFECT place to reach voters. For all our faults, we deliver an audience who is TUNED IN to their communities, news, etc.. Campaigns are really missing the boat (and alternatively usually missing out on some cheap buys on the local level to reach a fairly large, relevant audience). They should be all over the swing states with local ads.
3) I don’t know why in the world they’d drop the money on Google. Other than people searching for “Obama” and making sure they would hit the Obama site, Google requires an active audience seeking out keyword terms, which means that those folks have more than likely already made up their minds.
4) $5M is pretty low overall for online ad spending.
3. Chris | September 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Just an observation … if local media sites are running Google Adsense (and in the right display ad sizes 300×250), chances are that Obama ads will run, and you’ll take some of the Google dollars. This is happening for us in Las Vegas. Obama’s ads appear to be geo-targeted as well, so it does not hurt to be in a battleground state.
4. tdc | September 5th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
don’t get me wrong, i think it’s great.
but tv doesn’t want those dollars migrating to the web… they’ll discourage it . and dumb OLD republicans and democrats will probably oblige.
i have to take issue with the idea that the web is only good for fundraising and list building. i’d say that if i gave $5 or $5k to a candidate i’d probably be inclined to turnout on election day.
5. Mack | September 5th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I’m in a top 5 market, swing state, and I just got an Obama Internet order….a wopping $1,500….Local TV Sites have a long way to go….time to be realistic folks…
6. discreet_chaos | September 6th, 2008 at 1:44 am
wtf: Obama was buying all of the Democratic candidate’s names for a while. If you typed Bill Richardson into Google, Obama’s ad would appear and though I’d quit buying names when they got to a maximum/minimum of about seventy cents for an old project, I simply suspended those words and kept a check on them. Obama’s was the first to go to $10 and though we can’t really know what the minimum/maximum was (I miss Overture), I’m sure he had to have spent a pretty penny in the process.
PS) Yahoo’s bidding strikes me as a little more straightforward, but the top tier candidates still got to where they exceeded my price range.
7. Rod Overton | September 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
How did this end up comparing with what Borrel forecast?
I have noticed in my 12 years of online experience that no one ever goes back to determine if that guy is EVER correct with his forecasts… hmmmmm…
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