LAS
VEGAS -- At first glance it seemed peculiar to local political
observers that Democrat Tom Gallagher of Las Vegas would bother
plastering banner ads touting his bid for a local congressional
seat all over huge international websites such as Yahoo and CNN.com.
Yet as global as those sites are, Gallagher's ads did not
show up on computer screens in Boston, Beijing, or even the
west side of Las Vegas. They appeared only on the screens of
users in the ZIP codes that comprise the district in which Gallagher
is challenging incumbent Representative Jon Porter, Republican
of Nevada.
Indeed, these days your candidate not only knows where you
live but where your computer lives -- and how to get inside.
From news portals such as Yahoo and CNN.com to special-interest
sites such as NASCAR.com and the job board Monster.com, politicians
can now have their ads posted in a variety of highly tailored
way, including having them appear in specific geographic areas.
Beyond that, though, a banner ad -- boxy billboard-like graphics
that appear on the periphery of a site -- can be made to show
up only above news stories on specific topics such as health
care or the Iraq war that correspond to issues important to
the candidate.
It could even be a combination of the two: If a candidate
is trying to appeal to female voters, the ads might pop up on
the websites of women's magazines but only in the ZIP codes
the candidate wants.
It is this revolution, the ability to ''geo-target" voters
via the Internet, that could make 2004 the year that banner
ads arrived as a fixture of the ever-expanding menu of advertising
options for local political campaigns.
Both the Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney campaigns are using
banner ads to raise money and attack each other, but it's the
use of such tactics in local races that has fascinated political
observers. A decade after Senator Dianne Feinstein of California
built the first campaign website, and years since politicians
started using e-mail to communicate with voters, the lowly banner
ad is finally having its first banner year.
''This is fairly cutting edge," said Michael Cornfield, a
senior research consultant with The Pew Internet and American
Life Project in Washington, D.C., and author of the book ''Politics
Moves Online."
''It's still the exception rather than the rule," he added.
''It's always been accepted that radio reaches people in drive-time
and television reaches them in prime-time. Now, through the
Internet, you can reach people at work or school in a part of
the day that was previously virgin territory for political advertisers."
Internet users passively enable geo-targeting by giving over
their ZIP codes when they register or subscribe for many sites
and services, and Internet service providers such as local cable
companies also facilitate advertisers' efforts to geo-target
the masses by offering such information to political consultants,
specialists say.
''They now know exactly who's looking at your ads," said Republican
political strategist Becky Donatelli, whose firm, Hockaday Donatelli
Campaign Solutions, won first place for overall Internet campaign
in 2003 from the American Association of Political Consultants
for its work on Governor George E. Pataki's 2002 reelection
in New York.
''They may not know your name," Donatelli added, ''but they
know an awful lot about you. They can draw conclusions on who
you are. We're hoping every single one of our clients [uses
banner ads] by the end of the 2004 cycle. This is the big change
in politics this year."
Just a year ago, banner ads were so seldom used that the American
Association of Political Consultants struggled to find any to
extol in its ''best banner ad/pop-ups" award category. Judges
bypassed naming first-, second- or third-place winners and awarded
only an honorable mention to the San Francisco firm responsible
for banner ads in 2002 for Mark Leno, who credits the ads with
helping him triumph in a tight race for a California State Assembly
seat over former supervisor Harry Britt.
John Whitehurst of Leno's consultant firm, Barnes, Mosher,
Whitehurst, Lauter, and Partners, said his firm polled frequent
local voters to determine what they read online and then posted
ads on the sites of the San Francisco Chronicle and the alternative
weekly Bay Guardian. The ad placements, which predated the current
geo-targeting capabilities, were what Whitehurst called a ''reach-extenders,"
an inexpensive supplement to TV and radio advertising.
''In today's world of communications, you need to use a variety
of media, repetitive contact with great repetition," Whitehurst
said. ''If you can achieve that, you have successful communication.
In 2002, this was new stuff."
It's not exactly well-worn in 2004, either. Candidates such
as Gallagher are pioneering the effort under the direction of
the Washington, D.C.-based political consultant firm Malchow,
Schlackman, Hoppey and Cooper, who are among the first to add
an Internet ad division.
The firm, which is creating banner ads for the Kerry-Edwards
campaign, has three first-time Democratic congressional candidates
using them.
''Compared to other media, it's a bargain," insisted Michael
Bassik, head of the firm's Internet division. ''It costs less
than a penny to deliver an ad impression online, and you know
you're hitting the right people. To run a TV ad in Las Vegas
costs around $90,000 for one week. Our buy, which was twice
the length of that, cost less than half that."
The Gallagher camp used the ads with a TV campaign to introduce
a little-known former casino executive. Campaign manager Josh
Geise said 25,000 users viewed the campaign's TV ads by clicking
on banner ads placed for three weeks in early July on Yahoo,
AOL.com, CNN.com, and local TV station websites. By the end
of that multimedia push, Gallagher had moved to 6 points behind
Porter in the campaign's July poll, up from 27 points behind
Porter in an April poll, Geise said. Another Bassik client,
Jamie Metzl of Kansas City, Mo., used banner ads to launch harsh
attacks on rival Democrat Emmanuel Cleaver, a former Kansas
City mayor. The tactic paid off. For $20,000 the campaign garnered
local press attention and earned Metzl credibility as a legitimate
contender against the heavily favored Cleaver in the Aug. 3
primary for the open congressional seat in an overwhelmingly
Democratic district. The Kansas City Star, in fact, ran what
is believed to be one of the first analyses anywhere of the
veracity of an Internet ad.
''It was an early way to get our message out and get people
talking about the race," said Metzl campaign manager Mike Murphy,
whose team is skipping newspaper ads and will spend more on
Internet ads than radio. ''This is the newspaper ad for the
next century."
Some analysts are uncertain about the promise of banner ads,
which online users often cite as an Internet irritant.
''People will use it because it's so inexpensive that everyone's
going to try it out, but I'm skeptical of how anybody can measure
its effectiveness," said Bruce Newman, marketing professor at
DePaul University and editor of the Journal of Political Marketing.
''So what if people click? A click on a computer indicates that
there's some movement in the direction the banner ad wants you
to go, but it doesn't indicate that the user is absorbing the
information. It's becoming so annoying to have to deal with
the ambient noise of your screen that it's difficult to know
whether it'll have a significant impact."
Cornfield is less skeptical but said the medium has a lot
to prove. ''We have no evidence that this stuff brings in great
amount of money or votes," he said. ''This will explode when
somebody comes along to show people how it works. But so far,
nobody's figured out the formula yet."
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