David Ogilvy once said “if it doesn’t sell, it’s not creative.” His advertising genius offers timeless insight into the reality that creativity does not matter as much as what works ie what sells a product. During this recession, companies are forced to adapt to the changing climate. Advertising strategy is no different. In their quarterly report covering media trends, ZenithOptimedia detailed how businesses are dramatically shifting their advertising spending to online buys at the expense of radio and TV defying ad spending expectations.

They point to the “transparency, accountability, and flexibility” of the internet causing this trend. At a time when pocketbooks are bare, the internet has proven a reliable place for shrinking advertising budgets.

ZenithOptimedia expects internet ad expenditures to expand 10.1% globally in 2009 and account for 15.1% of all ad expenditures by 2011. Both forecasts exceed previous expectations. The brunt of the growth can be attributed to paid search advertising for users looking for bargains. In the US, search advertising is expected to grow 20% in 2009 alone. Some credit Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, for the spike.

All other advertising mediums including TV, cinema, and outdoor are predicted to shrink by 7.1%, 4.8%, and 7%, respectively. The increased supply of television space is leading some in consumer goods to gobble up these cheaper television spots leading to greater market share. The rest are forced to adapt to digital billboards and other non-traditional forms of advertising. Newspapers are predicted to have a 14.7% decrease in purchasing along with 16.7% for magazines. Yet, magazines may fair better in the long term because of the web’s difficulty in replicating their model.

Nevertheless, minor growth predictions in 2010 and 2011 will not reverse the shift that new technologies have brought to the advertising business. Lower entry costs means greater competition. Each traditional media source is losing out to a new media competitor: TV networks to digital cable/video websites, newspapers to bloggers, and radio stations to podcasts.

At the same time, the power of television is undeniable. Despite rapid changes in internet connectivity and use, this more traditional form of media still reigns. Nielsen’s quarterly report on TV, internet, and mobile use for the first quarter of 2009 confirms this. While newer media outlets like the internet and mobile devices are making strong inroads, television viewership is at an all time high. The average American watches 153 hours of television per month, yet is only on the internet for 29 hours. So, while new media use is expanding, Americans still turn on their televisions more than their computers. Along with consumers, advertisers are shifting to the internet’s creativity medium, especially with precious ad dollars dwindling, but television still “sells.” 

Capitalizing on the swearing-in of Democratic Senator Al Franken, the NRSC released a web video last week with quite a message. 
 

 
The ad’s message seems to be a warning: with 60 Democrats in the Senate, the party has the magic number allowing them to pass any legislation they want. The Senate will approve government-run healthcare and higher energy taxes. Elimination of the secret ballot will pass. Negotiating with terrorists will no longer be off-limits. It’s a scary thought. 
 
The message appears to convey how NRSC wants Americans to know the Democrats are in charge. And when this administration’s economic policies fail to bring relief to the people, the Democrats are the only ones to blame.
 
The erratic motions of Franken portray the Democrats as crazed politicians. The newspaper quotations emphasizing “THEIR” distances and separates the Democrats and their policies from the will of American people. The music conjures up feelings of despair, as if mourning the death of accountability and partisan oversight.
 
Ads like this run over the next 18 months could be effective as long as current economic trends continue. Coupled with ads promoting Republicans as fiscally responsible and pro economic growth, the message could turn things around in 2010.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, though seemingly immune to socio-economic divides, are experiencing the consequences of differences in race, class, and income.

Moreover, such social tools are making inequalities, perhaps thought defused, active culprits again. Net researcher Danah Boyd spoke on the phenomenon last week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York saying, “Social media are making the old social divisions obvious in totally new ways.”

While ComScore data released in June showed both Facebook and MySpace with 70 million users, Boyd argues teens’ social identities impacts their decision to join one network over the other. One teen Boyd interviewed went as far as to pinpoint what social groups Facebook appeals to versus MySpace.

Findings showed, the more affluent and educated groups tend towards Facebook- what Boyd calls the “modern incarnation of white flight.” Boyd also points out that unlike e-mail, a communication barrier exists between the two as messages cannot be sent back and forth.

Advertisers who rely on the internet as a medium that bridges inequalities will no doubt be disappointed at Boyd’s findings. Such information suggests advertisers will have to utilize more targeted strategies in executing their campaigns since the internet fails to serve as an equalizer.

The Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) convened last week in New York. Industry leaders, pundits, bloggers, writers, and others descended on the Lincoln Center to discuss and share ideas about technology’s effect on politics.

Technology has had a tremendous effect on how politics is conducted in this country. Dramatic changes have already occurred in how money is raised and ideas are disseminated. The bottom line: better understanding and use of technology is the wave of the future. Successful campaigns will adapt, while campaigns that don’t will be left behind.
  
One interesting presentation from the PDF was given by Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. Ning was created in 2005 as a social networking service that allows users to create their own network for a specific purpose. Since then, it has become the primary social network aggregator with 1.3 million created.
  
Gina Bianchini discussed Ning’s potential for interest groups and political campaigns. Under the concept of a ‘hub-and-spoke’ model, she championed the idea of having one location (Ning) as the epicenter and using other social networking sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc to focus traffic to this central location.

She used the Picken’s Plan as a successful model of the ‘hub-and-spoke.’ Ms. Bianchini explained how they were able to have a centralized network (the hub) and incorporate Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, and Linkedin (the spokes) to effectively promote their cause. This service brought their public relations, media, and social media together in one place. The result was 200,000 active members that were able to amass 1.1 million people to take a specific action on behalf of the campaign like sending an email or making a phone call to a public official. Picken’s Plan was able to organize their members based on Congressional districts leading to 60% of active members having a direct relationship with their representative. She also noted that other methods like email lists and text messaging can be integrated to make this service more inclusive.

The site has expanded in the last few years with new features that have streamlined users’ connectivity with their followers. Other politicians like Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and Chad Johannesen (candidate for Florida state representative) are also using this site. Ning brings multiple platforms together in one easy-to-use place. The fog of the campaign can be daunting so having one hub to generate material allows for the message to stay coherent and cohesive. Yet, questions arise regarding the uniqueness of this service compared to a campaign website. Can service provided by political new media firms utilizing the ‘hub-and-spoke’ model perform equally or better than a Ning network? Time will tell whether this service transforms how political campaigns and interest groups operate.

Here is an interesting snapshot posted on Facebook.  If you look closely on the left side of the gas pump you can see a red and white sticker outlining the effect on the price of gas if a particular gas tax supported by Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, was signed into law.

Despite signing the 2010 budget that imposes more than $1 billion in additional taxes on state residents, including the first increase state sales tax in 33 years, Patrick continues to strongly support raising the gas tax.

In true colonial spirit, people opposing the gas tax increase have placed these stickers at gas station pumps explaining how Deval’s proposed nineteen cent increase would put the tax at staggering 60 cents a gallon.

This is an interesting and effective approach to highlight a political issue.  The “opposition to the gas tax” sticker couldn’t be placed in a better spot with a more a captive audience. As Massachusetts motorists fill their tanks, they are asked to imagine what their bill will look like if the price were to go up even more. 

This has the potential to resonate because it addresses what’s actually on the audience’s mind at that moment – paying at the pump.  What makes it effective is the innovative approach. The sticker reads like a public service announcement rather than a partisan attack on the governor responsible for the higher tax. It doesn’t look like a political ad so people aren’t tempted to ignore it. 

Traditional political advertising can sometimes carry negative connotations with the prevalence of attack ads and partisan politics.  Thinking outside the box with strategically placed ads like this are the future of smart political advertising tactics.

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.

The big political battle of the summer is turning out to be on healthcare. Some interest groups have begun churning out material in support of their respective positions with video advertising. Conservatives for Patient Rights has been airing national ads in an attempt to define the debate. One of its first ads “The Four Pillars of Healthcare Reform” hones a clear and concise message with effective buzzwords like “choice” and “personal responsibility.”

CPR has also run a variety of ads with personal testimonials of patients negatively affected by government healthcare. Its most recent ad “Bulldozer” uses the metaphor of a bulldozer as the destroyer of personal choice.

Many universal healthcare advocates have reacted to their ad buys with online responses. For example, The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) responded with a witty 1:32 web video creatively mocking right wing attacks on health care.

Americans United for Change recently delivered a TV ad before President Obama’s speech for the American Medical Association entitled “62%.” Like the previous CPR ad, it is light, simple, and straightforward. Its effectiveness is manifest in the use of President Obama’s election support for healthcare reform.

These are just a few examples and will not likely be the last as the summer battle over healthcare reform heats up.

The RNC recently released a web video attacking Obama’s Government-Run Health Care Plan.
 

 
The video exposes the pitfalls of goverment-run health care. The ad hits on three major issues people are concerned with: Americans losing their rights to choose a doctor, medical procedures taking much longer to receive, and the plan prohibiting patients from paying for better medication even if it’s out of their own pockets.
 
The beginning phone call recording successfully plays on the overall decline of customer service in this country. People used to have a personal relationship with their doctor; now it looks as if health care in this country will revolve around automated answering services and civil servants rather than personal care and medical professionals. And the end, “disconnecting now, good-bye,” suggests the plan’s general disregard for the individual.
 
It will be interesting to see how the Democrats respond, but we may be on hold for a while.

“Conservatives seem so angry at their loss [of the presidency], so ready to blame Obama for all their problems that almost 400,000 more of them are watching Fox News this year than they did last year. I think they turn to Fox for comfort and confirmation. They need to hear the ranters and ravers tell them that it’s not their fault, it’s all because of those ‘Socialist Democrats.’ I have believed for years that it’s “comfort and confirmation” that drove conservatives to talk radio. Now it’s television, too. . . . Maybe it’s simply the need for an enemy, the desire to detest is greater than the power to tolerate; maybe it’s the need to blame somebody else for the bad things that are happening in our lives that drives viewers to Fox”

– Reese Schonfeld, the first president and CEO of CNN, commenting to the Huffington Post and why he believes Fox News has been the leading cable news network for the last nine years.

*Hat Tip: Wall Street Journal, Political Diary, John Fund