Millions for issue advocacy are being spent on all sides of the healthcare debate. The ability to separate oneself and message is key to rise above the chatter and get noticed. Online videos have become a tool for all as groups try to get their voice heard. Using humor, sprinkled with sarcasm, and a bit of irony can’t hurt.

In a humorous sketch on funnyordie.com, Will Ferrell and other celebrities do a mock-serious critique on health insurance companies.

A video entitled “Overpaid Celebrities” came out soon after as a response to the Funny or Die spoof.

The group Catholic Vote Action put out another video mocking the Ferrell skit.

The Dwight Drake (D) for Governor of South Carolina campaign put this creative web video out over the weekend. It has so far received extensive coverage. For a later entry into the race, Drake is looking for an angle on his opponents. He is connecting the video to a call to have Sanford’s removal from office brought before the Legislature in the next 30 days. A petition is linked to the video. The strategy to gain recognition and momentum seems to be working.

We’ll see if Sanford finishes his last 500.

Today, YouTube added a new feature to the advertising portion of their website. The addition of “Call-To-Action-Overlay” allows subscribers the ability to have a translucent pop-up ad appear at the bottom of the video linking to a third-party website.

The only catch: subscribers have to enter their video into YouTube’s Promoted Videos program. The new feature is free, per se, but subscribers are required to pay the advertising fee.

Before, sponsors had to include the website in the description of the video inconveniently off screen. As a result, many ignored these links and, thus, they were ineffective in driving significant traffic to the sponsors website.

Now, the options are endless for politicians, singers, musicians, video bloggers, interest groups, etc to dramatically increase flow to their website. The group “charity: water” was one of YouTube’s first beta tests for the project. They were able to raise $10,000 in one day for their cause of bringing clean water to developing countries. 

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid puts it best,

Brands can link their commercials back to the products they’re selling. Publishers (like us) can link back to relevant articles. And politicians can link back to their campaign homepages or petitions. But there’s almost certainly some other kind of creative use for the new ads waiting to be tapped, just as YouTube’s annotations were used to create choose-your-own-adventure video journeys.

With YouTube making a significant mark on the 2008 election cycle, the options are endless for politicians, interest groups, and parties wanting to create avenues to their websites. Ad overlays capture the emotion felt from a video, streamline the connection between parties, and translate into dollars, advocacy, or support. A few politicians are already doing this. Senator Patrick Leahy is using an ad overlay in a video calling for investigations into the Bush administration linked to a website with a petition. Taking down this barrier has cracked the political advertising floodgates. Put your rain coat on.  

If you haven’t noticed Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube offer beefed up targeting strategies based on demographics and interests.  For example, if you’re on Facebook and you’ve recently gotten engaged, you will immediately begin to notice a plethora of ads pushing all types of wedding services.  This is what many in the advertising world believe is the future of smart advertising.

According to respondents in a recent survey this is a good thing.

A study by Q Interactive, and reposted on Mashable, offers some interesting insight for advertisers. Notably, 56.6% of US internet users between the ages of 35 and 44 would view and advertiser favorably based on online ads tailored to their interests.  56.2% of this same age bracket also prefers to receive free online services and information in exchange for the use of their data to target relevant data to them.

According to the study, while some suggest creating ads targeting a consumer’s interests would be excessive, the study found consumers welcome it.

This is just one of the many ways in which social networking sites provide advertisers with plenty of data that can be utilized to make ads as effective and potent as possible.

For political campaigns and issue advertising, this is the beginning of an important new trend. Political advertisers put tremendous stock in the ability to target audiences.  As it’s been determined long ago, voters rarely act in one mass group, voting for people based on one overarching issue.  Voters, like consumers, have niche tastes and interests, and vote according to which candidate appeals to them on the issue(s) they care about most as an individual or member of a particular demographic.

While most voters get weary of the constant drumbeat of ads touting one or two specific campaign issues, this new advertising method, based on interest targeting, may prove more welcome.

Solid spot by Florida US Senate Marco Rubio in response to Charlie Christ’s entry into the race.

Steve Lonegan – Record of Failure and Foolish Ideas

There’s a bore in the Woods

Marco Rubio: I’m Running for Senate

In other message control news, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a new ad, titled “A Foundation for Change” framing President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office.

The ad goes on to highlight his signing into law legislation on the economic stimulus package, the Leadbetter equal pay legislation and the S-Chip funding bill.  The second part of the spot lays out Obama’s future initiatives regarding energy, healthcare and education.

Not surprisingly, the spot declines to highlight anything controversial, including the AIG bonuses and the spending bill, which received no support from House Republicans.

The ad breaks little ground, merely a stock in trade messaging vehicle for the President.  In terms of production and delivery, it’s very straightforward, leaving nothing too memorable.  Quite frankly, a little disappointing from the master messengers we witnessed during the 2008 Election Cycle, who also did some great media work leading up to the inauguration on change.gov.

I’ve been posting a number of new web videos here to draw attention to this relatively new medium of political persuasion.  I’ve written in the past about the effectiveness of web videos, but now they seem to be really taking off as a tool for disseminating information, adding extra benefit to the audio / visual format of political communication.

Here’s why Web Videos work:

• The spread of broadband, coupled with the genesis of easy navigable social network sites, has allowed for greater mass distribution and attention of such video pieces.
• The popularity of the media site You Tube has created a simple place for message delivery vehicles to point to, for all online users to see the video, without having to download or worry about having to interact with media players.
• The longer format allotted, mitigates the restraint media producers and editors are under to crank out a spot at :30 or :60 seconds.
• The stretch in format timing allows for arguments and plot lines to be better developed, resulting in heightened effect and interest.

As a consequence, we are seeing a lot of new fresh video pieces on the interwebs.

Campaigns, movements, associations, issue groups, party organizations and think tanks are putting greater resources into web videos and testing new projects through this art form / message delivery system.  It’s great to be apart of and watch this growing field of political activity, as it opens up an entire new creative platform for sharing ideas and beliefs in the political space.

Below is a great example of a web video, that is well done and interesting.  It’s a piece written and narrated by author/screenwriter, Andrew Klavan and produced by Pajamas Media.  The piece features Klavan discussing his view on the liberal approach to countering conservative culture and ideas, which he defines as a strategy as “shut up.”

While this piece does not encompass a wide array of production effects and mechanics, it does the job of making the argument that Klavan makes more interesting.  The visual accompaniment and the timing of the effects definitely enhances Klavan’s well structured argument and serves to strengthen the overall point, which is the truest measure of success for any politically driven web video.

The ultimate benefit of creating this kind of web video is that it’s execution in video format is more effective  than if Klavan just wrote this argument down and posted it somewhere.

I found this gem on Twitter today.  It is an audio / video illustration, titled, “The Crisis of Credit Visualized.” It walks the viewer through the financial components that brought on the current credit crisis that’s gripped our nation.  It’s produced by Jonathan Jarvis, an interaction and media designer.

According to Jarvis, “The Crisis of Credit Visualized distills the economic crisis into a short and simple story by giving it form. It is also argues that designers have the ability to see a complex situation, then turn around and communicate it to others. By giving graphic form to the credit crisis, it becomes comprehensible. Not only do economic activities take shape, but new relationships can emerge between these shapes.”

This type of work epitomizes smart media – defining an important and complex issue in a clear and easy to understand format.

Digesting all the spending being proposed in Washington can get difficult. It’s hard to comprehend and place this new massive spending in context.

While sobering, this well-produced video, from Stop Spending Our Future (Sponsored by The Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity Foundation) does a good job at providing a visual aid to the many numbers (read: tax dollars and debt) being tossed around by politicians.

They have a number of other well-produced web videos at stopspendingourfuture.org