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Googling the Conventions

Published by William Beutler on July 14, 2008 in 2008 Conventions, Advertising, Democrats, Google, Republicans, White House '08 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

The Google Adwords “buy your rivals” strategy can be a very effective way of putting your message in front of Internet users who wouldn’t necessarily think about your brand, product, service, candidate, issue, argument, party, or even your party’s nominating convention.

So let’s try Googling the major party political conventions. First up, the least interesting result, searching republican convention:

Google results for Republican Convention

As we can see, the RNC already has the top organic search result, the one that says Republican National Convention 2008 - September 1-4, 2008.” And yet they have also bought the top paid search result, the one against the light yellow background, which might seem like a poor investment. But maybe not, as we’ll see when we Google democratic convention:

Google results for Democratic Convention

It may have pained some in the GOP to put money down for the “ic” version of this word, but at least they have the satisfaction of having the absolute top search result on this page. While Republicans are generally considered to trail Democrats online in organization, infrastructure and overall support, here we can see that someone at the RNC (presumably under the direction of Cyrus Krohn) is thinking about how to overcome this disadvantage. And speaking of disadvantages, let’s see what happens when we drop the “ic” and search for democrat convention:

Google results for Democrat Convention

Now that is most certainly a good investment. It may pain the Democrats to compete, let alone pay money, for the (often) grammatically incorrect non-”ic” variation on their party’s name, but then Google searches don’t necessarily have to be grammatical to be useful. If the DNC or the convention committee have money in the budget — and this may be part of the problem — they’d be smart to get on that ASAP.

Could Twitter Ads Help Stop Twitter Spam?

Published by William Beutler on May 6, 2008 in Advertising, Spam, Tech Blogosphere, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Twitter spam is back on my mind as I think about this morning’s TechCrunch report that Robert Scoble, the #5 most-followed Twitter user, has started tweeting paid advertisements. TechCrunch is shocked, shocked! to find out there’s advertising happening on Twitter, and alludes to speculation that Twitter’s founders will renege on a longstanding promise never to put ads on the Twitter website.

Some of this is driven by the fact that Twitter.jp, the Japanese-language counterpart, launched with advertising last month. Why ads on the Japanese version, but not the English? The conventional wisdom is that it’s harder to put advertising on the site later. That may be true, but of course, we already know that advertising happens on Twitter: many if not most of the accounts listed on TwitterBlacklist.com are primarily commercial in nature.

Which leads me to wonder, could Twitter ads be a partial solution to the problem of Twitter spam? After all, what these people are trying to do is reach many more people than their actual level of notability would attract. In lieu of other options, they’ve followed many more accounts than they could actually read, often using a bot to follow accounts automatically. How many of them would be willing to pay a small amount to place advertisements in the blank space underneath users’ left-hand sidebar? My guess is quite a few. In fact, so would quite a few others not presently engaging in spam-related activity.

One requirement for these ads could be that they must link to a Twitter account, which could then link out to where ever the advertiser wished. According to Valleywag, Twitter.jp ads do this, and it sounds to me like a fine way to keep the advertising conversational, like Twitter is meant to be. You know what isn’t conversational? A self-help guru whose promotions-only account follows 18,265 others with only 472 reciprocal followers.

Twitter advertising of this type would create an alternative to annoying other users with unwanted follower notifications while putting Twitter’s parent company Obvious on the slow road to profitability. Biz, Ev and Jack say they’ve been looking for a business model. Why not this one?

I Want to E-Mail All the Little People

Published by William Beutler on April 19, 2008 in Advertising, E-mail, Netroots and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Some months back I signed up for an e-mail list administered by, in varying combinations, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller and Markos Moulitsas. The pitch at the time was for Stop the DC Establishment, a campaign to persuade journalists of “Petraeus’s long record of errant judgment in Iraq.”

The message shifted over time, asking list members to back the Democrats’ SCHIP plan (unsuccessful), oppose the January FISA bill (unsuccessful) and sign an FEC complaint about John McCain’s campaign finances (unresolved but likely unsuccessful). In every case, the list was a call-to-action directly furthering the Leftroots’ political goals.

This week, I received an e-mail from the same firedoglakeaction@gmail.com account used to send out most of these messages. But this one was just a little different:

Jane Hamsher’s commercial solicitation on behalf of Glenn Greenwald

A few “to be sure” statements: It’s their list, anyone can unsubscribe, and Greenwald’s book is undoubtedly sympatico with their previous messages.

But let’s be clear about what they’re doing: They are making commercial use of an e-mail list subscribers joined for expressly political reasons. More to the point, the list is now being used to advertise a product by one of the list’s owners.

I have no way of knowing the reaction of people on the list who signed up out of genuine support for their cause (as the blurred name above suggests, I didn’t sign up as myself) but I can certainly imagine some will be irritated that their interest in Greenwald’s political activities implies an agreement to receive commercial solicitations on his behalf. I’m a little irritated, if that counts for anything.

I actually wasn’t going to write about this, until I heard this week that Greenwald and Hamsher barely attended the Wednesday Dupont Circle event; apparently they showed up at the very end and gave a “hard sell for Greenwald’s book.” Two is one short of a trend, but if it becomes that, they could risk squandering their readers’ loyalty.

The Selling of the Snark

Published by William Beutler on April 14, 2008 in Advertising, Beltway media, Blog networks, Breaking News, Gawker Media, Publishing and William Beutler. 0 Comments

New Wonkette logoSo Nick Denton is selling/has sold/given away Wonkette, the third blog created as part of his Gawker Media blog network, which made Ana Marie Cox famous for DC and Jessica Cutler famous for fifteen people. But that was a long time ago.

Denton has parted ways with titles before, selling Oddjack and shutting down Sploid and Screenhead a few years back. This time he has found new homes for each of his websites. As of today, Wonkette belongs to managing editor Ken Layne. This is the second time Denton has put one of Layne’s blogs out to pasture; he was the sole editor of Sploid during its brief-ish run.

During Wonkette’s existence I have been an occasional reader and loyal critic. I am an approved commenter on the Gawker network, and every once in awhile I swing by to let them have it. Coincidentally, the most recent time was just last night.

Under Cox, I felt the blog leaned too far to the left while claiming to be non-partisan. Under subsequent editors I let go of that complaint and moved on to on the fact that it is simply not written for a Beltway audience. It breaks no news and advances no stories; it merely adds a garnish of cheap snark to the day’s headlines. Ana Marie Cox and Jessica Cutler, no longer with WonketteGawker matters to New York City (well, Manhattan at any rate) and Valleywag matters to the Silicon Valley (even if they hate it), but Wonkette offers no special insight on Hollywood for ugly people. Outside it’s America, which treats politics like entertainment. Here in the District, Defamer and Deadspin probably matter more, since we don’t want to talk shop after hours. But don’t take my word for it — check out the comments at DCist.

The last time Denton tried to make the site relevant to the actual District which it purports to cover, he moved Alex Pareene from New York to DC. Pareene was very funny (and still is on Gawker, for which he writes now) but these new kids — recent college student Jim Newell and total unknown Sara K. Smith — are bad Xerox copies. Fittingly, Layne doesn’t even live in Washington.

I take Denton entirely at his word in his explanation for selling it:

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did. … As for Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don’t come through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

Nick Denton, no longer the owner of WonketteSo now Wonkette returns to Henry Copeland’s unique Blogads advertising network, which handles a great deal of political advertising (including Blog P.I., on the infrequent occasions that someone wants to do business with us) and is a much better fit than whatever agency handles Gawker’s advertising.

Ultimately, politics just isn’t where the money is. (Don’t think for a moment Mark Penn built that tunnel between his houses in Georgetown with campaign earnings.) But as others note, now is the time to cash out. Traffic is up, likely due to growing interest in the presidential election. And just as you don’t want to sell pumpkin futures the day after Halloween, the day before isn’t any good either. Better do it while your buyers still have some expectation of getting a return on their investment.

Old New Media

Published by William Beutler on March 24, 2008 in Advertising, Convergent Media, Photographs, Seriously and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Seen this morning on the side of a Metro bus in Northwest Washington:

RealClearPolitics ad on Metrobus

RCP ad on Metrobus

Of course, RealClearPolitics may have started as a hastily-assembled morning news aggregator out of Chicago, but John McIntyre and Tom Bevan’s brand has expanded greatly since first partnering with Time Warner, and now that Forbes has a controlling stake.

It’s a bit jarring to see a purely web-based property appearing on a hunk of twentieth-century technology lumbering through the neighborhood, but as old media continues to acquire new media titles, there’s no reason to think we won’t see more of this. Maybe a lot more of this.

What’s next, Matt Yglesias on a billboard? An Andrew Sullivan bobblehead?

It’s 3 A.M. Do You Know Where Your Rhetoric Came From?

Published by William Beutler on February 29, 2008 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Rhetoric, Television, The Politico, White House '08 and William Beutler. 4 Comments

This morning First Read covered Hillary Clinton’s last-ditch negative campaign spot, questioning Barack Obama’s readiness for the job of commander-in-chief. Here’s their write-up:

*** Goin’ negative: We were about to write this morning about our surprise that Clinton hasn’t run a negative ad against Obama in either Ohio or Texas. But then we saw the new Clinton ad in Texas that appeared on TODAY. It goes: “It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders…knows the military…someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” Does it remind anyone of that LBJ Daisy ad? Ok, that’s a little extreme… But it sure does raise the specter of fear.

It’s also being compared to the “red phone” ad Mondale put up against the insurgent Gary Hart in 1984.

But it actually reminded me of something else entirely, and much more recent: a campaign mailer put out by AFSCME in support of Clinton in New Hampshire not two months ago. Politico’s Ben Smith was the first to post it; here it is, cropped for clarity/focus:

Hillary Clinton “warhead” mailer by AFSCME

You could say AFSCME tested the message in a small market before the campaign took it wider. Nothing wrong with that unless it was actually an AFSCME-backed 527, which the campaign would be forbidden from coordinating with. Then again, lifting an argument two months later is hardly a smoking gun.

As to its potency, the AFSCME mailer received a bit of negative coverage in the blogsosphere, but not enough to backfire. This time the stakes are even higher, and the campaign itself is making the risky argument.

If it works, it will no doubt join the ranks of those controversial-but-effective spots (add Reagan’s “Bear in the woods” and 43’s “Wolves” ads in there, too). If it doesn’t, as I expect, it will be quickly forgotten and everyone can get on with blaming Mark Penn for everything.

527 Reasons John McCain Should Watch Out

Published by William Beutler on February 13, 2008 in 527s, Advertising, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Republicans and Television. 2 Comments

By process, Republicans have eliminated the probability (if not possibility) that anyone but John McCain will be the party’s nominee. Meanwhile, the Democratic contest now appears certain to last several more weeks at least. As little as two months ago, the prognosticators had the Democrats deciding early with the GOP going to a brokered convention, yet the opposite is occurring.

The conventional wisdom right now seems to be that that this is going to hurt Democrats and help Republicans. McCain now has time to win over disaffected conservatives, raise money for the general election and hone his positive message. Meanwhile, the Democrats may not know who their nominee is for sure until a month hence, and whomever emerges victorious will not only have these disadvantages against McCain but may also have to deal with more-serious-than-usual intra-party divisions. That is, a long hard slog between Cinton and Obama could leave the losing faction demoralized and slow to rejoin the fray.

I’m not sure this is correct, at least not overall. Sure, McCain will be better prepared and the Democrat will have to mend fences late. But we’re only talking about the campaigns and party apparatii. This is the age of the 527. And it cannot go without noting that this is true in no small part to McCain’s own campaign finance legislation which, by limiting soft money to the parties, weakened those institutions and, by leaving open a “loophole,” allowed issue-advocacy 527s to replace them.

Certainly, a pro-McCain 527 could launch anytime now, and I assume at least one will. But 527s are less effective at building up than tearing down. Whereas a party must build a governing coalition to succeed, 527s are often driven by a narrow faction or collection of issues. Because coordinating between a campaign and 527 is illegel, they can’t share strategy or resources, and likely won’t know the others’ targets. It’s almost designed to waste resources.

But a negatively-focused 527 doesn’t necessarily need to know whether Obama will be nominated in order to start hitting McCain. So far, we’ve been told that McCain will keep the U.S. in Iraq for 100 years, will start more wars in the meantime, and that he is very old. We will undoubtedly hear more soon. And once the key themes are worked out online, we’ll start seeing them on television.

Meanwhile, Republican 527s can’t be sure that targeting one candidate or the other won’t be money or resources wasted. The RNC just rolled out an Obama Spend-o-Meter, which does in fact play to a McCain strength, especially as the GOP itself has lost credibility on the matter. On the other hand, talking about big-spending Democrats is a pat response. It could just as easily have been the Clinton Spend-o-Meter.

Unfortunatley for McCain and the GOP, a candidate-specific strategy will just have to wait.

In an Interstellar Burst…

Published by William Beutler on January 19, 2008 in Advertising, Entertainment, Fred Thompson, MSNBC, Metapost, Technology, White House '08 and William Beutler. 0 Comments

…I am back to save the universe. Or at least begin posting again, following just about the worst case of the flu I’ve had in years. I’ve got a few not-quite-ready-for-full-post ideas, so let’s clear them from the docket before getting back to blogging as usual:

  • First and most importantly, Blog P.I. would like to thank our advertisers. In related news, Blog P.I. has advertisers! Yes, the Blogads box at right has lain barren since I first signed up over a year ago. But now there are three — one from the left, one from the right, and one that I created to promote a friend’s website. Your support is greatly valued, even as I remain officially neutral on the merits of your particular issue and/or cause.
  • I yield to no critic in my undying devotion to HBO’s “The Wire,” but I must concur with Slate’s TV Club that this fifth and final season is off to a rocky start. The newsroom stuff is too didactic, some of the older characters are speechifying a bit, and the pacing seems weird. I know, it’s a tall order to wrap up a series of this scope in ten episodes while introducing yet another new plot strand. If this was any other TV show, I wouldn’t be complaining. But about that newsroom — does anyone else think the show’s explicit “dead where it doesn’t count” message is somewhat undercut by the ongoing investigation into the death of four girls in Southeast DC? Unlike some fictional deaths depicted this season, these real ones made the front page of the Washington Post again and again, making national (even international) news upon first discovery. I’m not discounting the trend — but current events at least prove it’s not fait accompli.
  • In a recent post, I pointed out that LinkedIn offered no option to turn off the acquaintance-recommending feature that automatically alerts you to people you may want to be networked with. As it so happened for my colleague, one such recommendation was an ex-girlfriend, whom he most certainly did not want to network with. Well, I still think LinkedIn should offer the option to disable (or enable) this feature, but he informs me that it is no longer appearing on his account. So, uh, Blog P.I. gets results?
  • Here’s something totally useless, but as an admirer of Douglas Hofstader, amuses me greatly: What’s the TinyURL for TinyURL.com? Well, if you plug the URL into its self-same website, it turns out to be:

         http://tinyurl.com/u

    So what’s the TinyURL for that?

         http://tinyurl.com/7uw

    And that?

         http://tinyurl.com/8ee

    I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The website remembers every TinyURL generated for each page previously entered, so I assume that http://tinyurl.com was in fact the 21st URL entered into the website. Nice to know others are just as interested in the concept of reflexivity. (Hat tip: NM3.)
  • Today is a day I’ve been counting down to for nearly a year, even though I didn’t always know it: Fred Thompson needs a big showing in South Carolina’s primary this evening, and via Captain Ed, it looks like he just might get it. It’s been a great last few weeks for the campaign, maybe even the best few weeks of the campaign so far. Here’s hoping it’s not, in fact, the last few weeks of the campaign. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I guess that’s all for the moment. Regular blogging about matters of politics and technology to resume shortly.

Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Bright

Published by William Beutler on January 2, 2008 in Advertising, Campaigns, Fred Thompson, Iowa Caucuses, Mitt Romney, Seriously, Television, White House '08 and William Beutler. 7 Comments

This end of a post at Talking Points Memo today made me laugh:

If Romney loses Iowa after having spent $1.8 billion there and then loses in his backyard in New Hampshire he’ll be in bad, bad shape. The horrid press over the following few weeks would likely kill him.

(ed.note: I had meant the reference to Mitt’s $1.8 billion in spending in Iowa to be an obvious bit of sarcasm at Romney’s expense. But it seems Romney’s efforts to buy the Republican nomination have become so notorious and proverbial that many readers are asking if it’s really true. So, no, I believe his spending is well below $1.8 billion. But he wants it really bad and there’s still a day left. So who knows.)

$1.8 billion sounds plausible? Using what counting system?

Elsewhere on the web today, a Des Moines-based WFAA reporter says Romney has spent $4 million on TV ads; also today, Fred Thompson [disclosure] aide Rich Galen writes in a column for CNS news,

according to the Professional Guessing Class, [Romney] may have spent upwards of $8 MILLION here

If Romney has in fact spent $8 million, which doesn’t sound like a bad guess, then he would have to spend 225 times that in order to spend $1.8 billion. CNN says all the candidates combined have spent $40 million on TV ads; I’d be surprised if there was a billion dollars worth of TV time to be had in Iowa in an entire year.

If Romney really dropped that much money in the state, Iowa could practically retire, and hey, maybe accede to another state or system its coveted first-in-the-nation status. Which would probably be a good thing for everyone. Except, of course, Iowa.

P.S. For example, see this from First Read:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — A woman who famously switched from volunteering for Clinton to Obama has changed her mind… again. …

“Probably I’ll caucus for Richardson,” she said after Edwards spoke. “My guess is he won’t be viable, and then I’ll probably scoot right over to Edwards.”

Are Iowans really so serious about their vote? Or are they spoiled and self-indulgent? In another state, I’ll bet voters would not feel so entitled, political observers would not ascribe such mythical status to their choices, and just maybe, subsequent states would have a bigger say in the primary process.

Alas, as my former Hotline colleague Reid Wilson explains, attempts at reform might be about as easy to properly implement as the Fair Tax.

P.S. After some consideration, I actually wish I had called this “Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Good With Numbers.”

All Political Consultants are Stupid

Published by Not Paul Begala on May 16, 2007 in Advertising, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Meatspace, Netroots and Television. 1 Comment

Except the ones that want your business!

The firm of MacWilliams Kirchner Sanders has a three-part series at MyDD this week (here, here and here, in reverse order) on media buying.

My summation: Buying broadcast is bad and nasty political consultants do it to rip your ass off because they charge commissions. Hire us, because we’re smarter, and it’s for a good cause, because our clients are progressives — not corporations!

Forgive my snark, but everytime I hear this “broadcast sucks, buy cable, and media consultants are all whores sucking away your money” it makes me laugh. These guys make great points about efficiency and targeting but they don’t tell the full story.

First, you can make assumptions that men watch certain channels and women others, but you’ll need to get real data from the individual markets through your own polling — not exactly cheap to do. Registered, likely and unregistered voters do not neatly fit into demographic profiles that cable companies have on hand.

Second, frequency and points matter. MKS at least recognizes that fact in this graf:

It is important to point out that campaigns can’t always spot buy. Some cable systems limit spot buying for political campaigns or don’t allow them at all. (When that happens, the buyers have to push back and negotiate hard for whatever they can get. Most of the time it works.)

Yeah, no shit guys. Campaigns can almost never spot buy on cable because cable operators sell hundreds upon hundreds of spots over a boatload of channels. They like predictability, something campaigns are not. Plus, you don’t really get to bully them like you can with broadcast. Your $100K over two months doesn’t mean squat to them.

Broadcast has many more people buying for a fewer number of spots. And, they also happen to have the local news stations, something voters tend to watch.

The real problem with cable is that you cannot build GRP’s (Gross Ratings Points) quickly like you can on broadcast. You can buy as much cable as possible over months and not build points as quickly as you can on broadcast. This creates a problem: time. Because you need to build frequency, cable requires you to buy long term, sometimes a full month to reach appropriate saturation. This means you can’t pivot your commercials to answer new charges, you limit your spot options because of the length of the campaign and you cannot air new charges/mistakes that happen late in the campaign.

Broadcast allows these options because you can buy up the things that people watch and get your GRPs up in as little as 5 days. Of course, that’s more expensive.

It annoys the piss out of me that the netroots frequently assigns we political consultants the “dumbass” label because we don’t do things the way they see fit. As if we don’t want to win, save money or be effective.

It’s even more interesting to now see political consultants start playing the same game. Why? Guess they’re trying out a new marketing strategy to get more clients.

Update: This proves my point exactly. They give you an example of their work. This was an interest group campaign that used targeted cable to increase turnout among infrequent, pro-choice women voters in Oregon. To be fair, they don’t claim cable was the answer, but the example falls right into my main complaint about cable. This was a long-term, sustained campaign that relied on 1 message and 1 group of voters. It was likely prudent to layer in cable with mail, phones and all else to get the message out to women who cared about choice. But, if they had to switch up their message in the last 2 weeks, they would never have been able to build enough repetition behind it to get out their new message. Convenient for interest groups, not so convenient for tight campaigns where a sliver of the electorate that decides in the final weeks of the campaign determines your winner.

Plus, by citing “nearly 70% — 24,523 — of the 35,000 women targeted by PPAF in those three cable clusters turned out to vote in 2004″ is very disingenuous. There just so happened to be a presidential election that cycle where the incumbent was widely despised by the left (pro-choice voters tend to be more liberal) and you had 2 women at the top of the ticket, Christine Gregoire and Patty Murray. Both, I’ll bet, targeted the hell out of pro-choice women because their Republican opponents (especially George Nethercutt) were bad on choice.

Again, there’s no doubt that cable had an effect, but the netroots wholesale advocacy for cable just doesn’t jive with how real campaigns are run.