When can we invest in this? (0.00 / 0)

I would chip in 25 bucks.  If I make an openleft donation, can it go to this?

Anyone with me?

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by: Dan U-A @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 20:20:04 PM CDT

Effectiveness (0.00 / 0)

I wonder if it would be more effective for a search user to look at 8 anti-mccain ads in a row, or for two well-performing ads to reach a lot of geography.

I hope people share their Google ad results if they make them, so we can aggregate click-throughs and other stats.

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by: TValley @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 20:45:17 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

If you can run ads by state wouldn't it make sense to have some (4.00 / 4)

state specific issue ads too...like McCain's Yucca Mountain stance in NV and his water compact stance in CO?

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by: stevie314 @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 20:36:32 PM CDT

And link to local papers (4.00 / 2)

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by: TValley @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 20:43:35 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Definitely (0.00 / 0)

This strategy makes far and away the most sense.

Chris, why don't you run your existing ads as planned, but in rotation with state-targetted ads, linked to local papers as suggested here?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 21:06:31 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Not to be a backseat driver or anything (0.00 / 0)

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by: TValley @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 10:19:54 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Going to run one of these (0.00 / 0)

On McCain's adultery and abandoning his crippled wife and kids for the beer heiress 18 years younger than him Any suggestions where the link should point?

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by: Jack McMillin @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 21:17:21 PM CDT

Ohio Campaign - McCain Favors Super Rich (4.00 / 9)

I ran a Google AdWords campaign this weekend targeted at Ohio. Here's the ad:

The article links to a CNN page which fairly discusses the competing plans and supports the claim made in the ad.

Total cost so far is just under $30. For that price the results were:

• 45 click-thru's
• 7k search impressions
• 23k content impressions
• 30k total impressions
• 0.55% search CTR
• $0.64 search CPC

The bulk of the clicks and views came from these keywords:

• obama  (2600 / 14 )
• mccain - (1600 / 10 )
• barack obama (970 / 5 )
• john mccain ( 800 / 1 )
• barak obama ( 400 / 3 )
• ohio taxes ( 74 / 0 )
• toledo taxes, cleveland taxes, other tax keywords (125 / 3 )

In choosing keywords and deciding how much to pay per click my goal was to try to maximize the number of impressions for the money. To that end I tried to keep the cost-per-click low and was less concerned with getting alot of clicks than I was with getting alot of views. I share the opinion that there's value in having a short, simple message on screen where the voter will see it. How many of those 30k impressions actually did get read is a question I can't answer.

Going forward I'll let state polls help choose the target and will be considering other messages to push.

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by: Curt Matlock @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 21:40:47 PM CDT

love it! (4.00 / 1)

The content of that ad is really good.  Puts the focus on the economy (and with the Wall Street clusterfuck, people will be focused on it), shows people that they'll pay less taxes under Obama than McCain.  According to a dkos diary from today, talking about the tax plans was the issue that converted people from undecided to lean-Obama.

If you don't mind, I do have some constructive criticism for your keywords.  Instead of ohio/toledo/cleveland + taxes, try "john mccain taxes", "barack obama taxes", "john mccain tax cut", etc.  You can use adwords' settings to target the ads to Ohio viewers, you shouldn't need to include that in your keywords.  Also, people searching for things like "ohio taxes" are probably looking up info on state taxes, not federal taxes.

John McCain <3 lobbyists

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by: Fran for Dean @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 23:20:29 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

You hit people who were already thinking about taxes (0.00 / 0)

Which is awesome--they were totally ready to absorb the message.

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by: TValley @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 10:21:16 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Great Ad (0.00 / 0)

I really like this ad. Since you are running it in Ohio (where I live), I've just started running a similar one in Indiana, West Virginia, and Louisville, KY.

Here is the ad copy I'm using:

McCain Favors Super Rich
Obama tax plan helps middle class
Most taxpayers do better with Obama

alternated with:

McCain Favors Super Rich
Millionaires get breaks from McCain
Most taxpayers do better with Obama

I'm currently linking to the same CNN Money.com article that you are, though I'm tempted to try this Washington Post graphic which includes information about the number of people in each income range.

I'm not targeting content providers -- only those searching -- since I want to maximize the number of people who are likely to actually look at my ad. Here are my search terms:

john mccain tax
john mccain tax plan
john mccain tax policies
john mccain tax policy
mccain tax
mccain tax plan
mccain tax policies
mccain tax policy
obama tax
obama tax plan
obama tax policies
obama tax policy
republican tax
republican tax plan

But all of the "mccain" items require a minimum of $5.00 to run.

I've set the maximum cost/click to $1.00 and my daily total is $20.

I'm worried that we may get to the point where we are bidding against each other.

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by: RandomNonviolence @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 12:57:27 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

McCain Favors Super Rich - Discussion (0.00 / 0)

That sounds great!

I actually considered the WaPo article and like it better but didn't use it because the Washington Post requires you to have a username and password to see their articles. I didn't want people without accounts to have to set anything up to see the article. The next best thing seemed to be the CNN article I ended up using.

I'm not decided yet on the relative values of clicks versus views. I got 45 clicks but I value the 30,000 times it showed up on a web page more. With that logic it seems more important that your little bit of screen get used to send the message. So even though the WaPo article was better I was quite happy that "Money.cnn.com" was showing up in the ad. That's a reputable source and if people don't click they still see "McCain Favors Super Rich" and "CNN".

Regarding the cost of the McCain keywords I noticed that before last night those were all under a dollar. Then they jumped up to $1. Then they jumped again to $5. Makes me wonder if someone in the McCain campaign is playing defense by bidding up the price. Of course, I'm a newbie to this so that may be a normal fluctuation but it sure does make it more costly to use certain terms as keywords.

One last point. I wouldn't worry about bidding against each other. When I have all my search terms enabled the clicks add up so fast that my entire days budget gets used in a couple hours. Even while it is active I think Google is using some logic to only show the ad a certain number of times. If you look at the popularity of some of those search terms it's clear that there's no way someone willing to pay $20 a day is going to have their ad placed every time someone googles that term. Right now for instance I have my campaign paused so that I can run the ad tonight when workers without internet connections will have a chance to see it. So don't hesitate to run against Ohio since I think it is unlikely we'd collide.

Again, I'm new to this so if anyone has corrections or suggestions please fill us in.

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by: Curt Matlock @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 13:55:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I did a Palin one (0.00 / 0)

Palin is danger to U.S.
GOP V.P. candidate shows stunning
ignorance of security issues
link to a HuffPo story

Put in a bunch of keywords.

No impressions of any kind. What's gone wrong?

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by: WI Dem @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 21:55:32 PM CDT

OK this one's working (0.00 / 0)

McCain in fragile health
Docs demand health records,
worry cancer will return soon
therealmccain.com/doctors/

Got a 2.6 percent click through rate in the first few hours.

Still don't know why the Palin one never appeared. It was there for a couple of days.

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by: WI Dem @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 01:15:44 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

my palin ads (4.00 / 5)

Here are four ads I've been running targeting Sarah Palin for her foreign policy ignorance.  I'm running them in Virginia, Colorado, and around my hometown of Tallahassee, FL.  VA and CO are areas with significant military presence and history, where I hope that a lack of understanding of foreign policy will be particularly damaging.  And Tallahassee is for personal reasons. :)

These are the top performing four; the others are almost identical language language, but the links are to TPM and Huffington Post.  The ones pointing to YouTube have click-through rates over 3 times as high -- approaching 1% for the top-performing ad.  These stats include 2 days or running content and search ads, and a day of just search ads.

(The four lines here correspond to the four ads above. The first column is the fraction of ads served, the second is clicks, the third is impressions, and the fourth is click-through rate.)

Here are the top-performing keywords I'm using (without the quotes): "palin", "sarah palin", "bush doctrine", "palin interview"; there are a bunch of others but they don't get the sheer numbers of impressions or clicks. 2.2% of the people searching for "palin" clicked on one of my ads. I've also had over 2000 impressions on "mccain", but only a handful of clicks.  Total cost so far: less than $60.  Feels better than $60 going into Obama's $66 million, although I've given there, too.

I'm running this through tomorrow, then I'll find something else topical to run an ad about -- suggestions?


http://www.actblue.com/page/asaslist

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by: asahopkins @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 22:37:35 PM CDT

Great Info (0.00 / 0)

I have a feeling its because people A- Want unbiased info and B- Want to "see for themselves".

I dont have a suggestion for future topics, but keep with Youtube.  That is great.

"Keep the Faith"

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by: blue south @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 23:00:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'd Just Suggest That You Hang On To Your Top Preformers (4.00 / 2)

And only replace the lower-performing ones.

The top performers may stay good longer than you think.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 23:34:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

How about... (0.00 / 0)

McCain: "I'm Out of Touch"

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by: GreenVTster @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 07:31:27 AM CDT

Day 4/5 (4.00 / 1)

I rotated 2 ads over the weekend:

The first one linked to the Planned Parenthood ad.  Results:

The "Predator" ad definitely was much more successful in terms of CTR.  I'm guessing that was due to the harsher language in the ad which perked some curiosity.

I'm going to run two new ads today.  1. Another youtube clip (great info asahopkins) & 2. Find a local article in Colorado (where I'm targeting) (great idea paul)

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by: Ian Campbell @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 10:19:32 AM CDT

I love that we can run strictly editorial ads (0.00 / 0)

Where the ad headlines are just opinions, or quotes.  You almost never see these--I bet you'll start seeing them more and more soon.

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by: TValley @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 10:23:04 AM CDT

McCain on the Economy (0.00 / 0)

I'm running two ads today about McCain on the Economy.  I wanted to pass on this youtube vid that I found.  It ties together a couple of themes: McCain's statements about not understanding the economy, with him straight up lying that he ever said it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

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by: Ian Campbell @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 10:46:46 AM CDT

This is a great idea (0.00 / 0)

I've been trying this for 3 days to direct traffic to my modest satirical blog www.thatsrightnate.com and still have a zinger at McCain in the ad itself.  

Today I targeted people looking for Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers type stories with:

McCain Says Economy Great
Is prosperity right around corner?
Maybe taxing benefits will help.

This has had a .15% CTR, but the nice thing is I've been paying 4 cents per click so I've managed 25 clicks since 7PM tonight on that one for $1

My best add from yesterday had a .28% CTR with

Obama will raise taxes on all of us
making $250K. Make your help vote!
www.thatsrightnate.com

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by: Thatsrightnate @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 22:41:06 PM CDT