This is a lot more expensive than it was two years ago. In 2006, when I ran roughly 45 of these ads in some key congressional districts order to monitor the poorly named Googlebomb the Elections campaign, there were more twice as many impressions and clicks for only about 15% the cost. So, it appears that 2006 might have been the "golden age" for individual grassroots activists to create in campaigns such as these. From now on, the increasing cost of these campaigns will probably force individual activists to focus on individual campaigns, and not throw a net as large as this.
Despite the expense, it was still cost-effective. It is hard for me to imagine that $3,300 of television ads would have been seen by 305,000 people, and resulted in 2,104 taking the initiative to find out more information on the content of the ad. This was probably even more cost effective than phonebanking or canvassing (although Natasha and I did canvass our neighborhood, too). How long would it have taken us to get on the phone or knock on the door of 2,104 people who were receptive to our message and wanted to hear more? I seriously doubt we could have pulled that off from Labor Day through Election Day, even if we made it our full-time jobs.
House campaigns are still largely untapped. The vast majority of the cost of this campaign came from the three Senate campaigns--Chambliss, Coleman and Gordon--plus the two McCain ads. The House campaigns (the other six listed here), overall, were less expensive per click and had a higher click-through rate. In the future, a focus on the House might be more appropriate for the budget-activist.
All in all, I am pretty happy with how this went. How did your campaigns go?
I did some GOTV work with Natasha today, and tomorrow we will be making a bunch of Rice Krispy treats to give to people to help convince them to stay and vote even if the lines are long. The treats will be funded by the $100 I received for the general lection from the Philadelphia Democratic Party. Yes, this is the evil "street money" that I receive twice a year, as part of being a committee person: $100 bucks worth of Rice Krispy Treats to give to voters to stay on the line. Oh, the evils of street money.
In the meantime, I want to make two final activism pleas to Open Left:
Even though it is not reflected in the current totals, the Better Democrats matching money came in today. Take the current totals, add $5,000, and that is actually where we are. This means with one final push of $2,468, we will reach our goal of $75,000 for the page. Can we do it? You guys have been amazing so far, so I have faith that we can. Let's do it!
Second, if you haven't already, there is still time to run a Personal Paid Media campaign. Natasha and I launched our 10th, and final, ad this afternoon. It is targeted at Republican Christopher Lee in the New York 26th:
Over the past week alone, our ten ad campaigns received 48,898 search impressions (we turn off the content network on all ads), and 368 click-throughs. The best performing ad, by far, is our one in Minnesota:
This ad has a click-through rate of 3.93%, triple our click-through rate of any other ad. It feels great to be able to effectively knock on doors of voters in any campaign I wish, and to only reach voters when they are most curious about the campaign for which you are advertising. If you haven't started a personal paid media campaign, get started on one now. If you are already running one, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And, whether you are just starting one or if you have already started, check out this great guide on how to improve your campaigns.
Rice Krispy treats tomorrow, but tonight let's top off the Better Democrats page, and let's run one more Personal Paid Media campaign. And then, they day after that, we change the world.
This is also an open thread to tell stories about your weekend electoral activism.
It's Halloween, and I know many of you are about to go out to parties, or tricker-treating with your children. Before / after you do so, take some action to help build the Democratic wave that is coming in four days.
Start a Personal Paid Media campaign. Find a congressional campaign or a swing state where you want to help out, and start running Google search ads using your own message and your own budget. With these campaigns, you only reach people who are actively searching for information on the election. Natasha and I are running ten ads right now. You can do however many you like. Pile it on.
Tomorrow, I will be canvassing my neighborhood. What will you be doing to help make history? This is an open thread for weekend activism ideas and opportunities.
For the final weekend push, when most undecided voters will be searching for candidate information online, Natasha and I are now running the following ads:
--First, we started running a Presidential ad again:
This ad is running across the entire state of Pennsylvania. During it's history, this ad has received 65,014 search impressions (we disable the "content network" on all of our ads, and only target search), and 209 click-thrus. For the final weekend, we upped the bid to $5 a pop, with a daily budget of $100.
With only seven days until the polls close, most campaigns have already made their final media purchases for this cycle. However, even though campaigns are winding down their paid media purchases, there is still plenty of time for you to run a low-cost, easily changed, personalized paid advertising campaign for whatever swing state or whatever congressional campaign you wish.
It is time to ramp up the Personal Paid Media campaign. Between now and the election, I will personally run at least 15 of these, and probably closer to 30. In the last twenty-four hours alone, I started three new Google Ad campaigns, all targeted at key congressional races. Check them out in the extended entry.
Over in Quick Hits, Neil the Ethical Wereworlf provides a link to saxby-chambliss.com, a website he put up on the Georgia Senate campaign. Neil seems to have done it on his own, first by purchasing a URL the Chambliss campaign foolishly let slip by, and second simply by producing some very cool content for the website.
To top it off, multiple commenters in the thread have indicated they will redirect their personal Google Ads on the Georgia Senate campaign toward the page. It is a remarkable confluence of the Personal Paid Media campaign and some great work by Neil. Fantastic, outstanding, creative grassroots activism.
Well done Neil. And well done WI Dem and Brian Weatherson who are running Google Ads on the Georgia Senate campaign. If you want to start running Google Ads for a campaign this year, click here for great guide on how to do so. And, if you want to support Jim Martin, hop on over to the Better Democrats page, and drop in a few dollars.
Today, I am happy to announce the return of the Personal Paid Media campaign that I launched five weeks ago. This coincides with our fundraising push on the Better Democrats page, since I am shifting the focus of Personal Paid Media away from the Presidential election and toward congressional campaigns. Specifically, I will be purchasing Google Ads for all of the candidates on the Better Democrats page.
Why the shift? My reasons are the same for why you should donate to candidates on the Better Democrats page:
Dollar for dollar, you can make more of a difference in congressional campaigns than you can in the Presidential campaign. With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in the Presidential election, congressional campaigns that cost about $2 million seem like a bargain in comparison. Your contribution makes more of a difference.
Unlike the Presidential election, we are still tied, or even behind, in most of these campaigns. None of our candidates, with the possible exception of Eric Massa, is clearly ahead in their campaigns right now. Everyone is either in a real dogfight, or is trailing slightly. By giving to Better Democrats, you can help put a few more campaigns over the top. Our Senate candidates in particular--Begich in Alaska, Martin in Georgia, and Merkley in Oregon--are all in the closest, most pivotal campaigns in the country.
If we want a real progressive governing majority, then this is definitely the group of candidates to whom you should donate. Our House candidates in particular--Alan Grayson, Darcy Burner, Sam Bennett, Annette Taddeo, Tom Perriello, Dennis Schulman--these are all potential progressive leaders in Congress. Rather than spending money to elect candidates who will let you down all too often, make contributions to candidates who will fight hard for progressive values once they are in office.
To supplement your donations, I am going to be helping out by running Google Ads for these candidates in their districts or states. Tomorrow, I will have the first reports on the results. The first phase of the campaign went extremely well, as my ads resulted in 411 click-thrus and 123,568 search engine impressions--all in swing states--for $244.67. I am aiming to surpass that for the Better Democrats.
I have three points in this diary. First, to understand where everyone's personal paid media campaign's are so as to maximize efficiency and messaging. If other people are already doing "Republicans kill the economy" ads in Ohio, I don't want to duplicate efforts. Second, to make a point about the ad copy itself and click throughs versus impressions. And third, to explore a next, post-election suggestion for expanding the program.
On several instances recently, the Obama campaign has referred to McCain attacks as "lies." They even ran a television ad to that effect:
Today, the Obama campaign it continuing a different line of attack on McCain. By using McCain's absurd statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," they are pushing the "out of touch," narrative that connects to McCain not knowing how many houses he owns, to being in Washington for 26 years, and to McCain himself saying that he is out of touch.
More on the new line of attack in the extended entry.
Here is the latest update on my personal ads, looking only at how they performed since Friday:
McCain Ad #1:
8,935 search impressions
46 click thru's
Average cost per click: $0.57
McCain Ad #2:
8,816 search impressions
46 click thru's
Average cost per click: $0.60
I created the second ad in order to see if I could make one that performed better than the first ad. As it turns out, their performance is almost identical. So, instead of dropping one and replacing it with a new ad, I have decided to take both of these ads on the road.
First, after two consecutive days where I didn't receive a single impression on my revised Palin ad, I paused the campaign. I will try it again later, but I am sure that the problem is with how I am setting up the ad, not that no one in the entire state of Pennsylvania is searching for Sarah Palin online.
Second, I created a new McCain ad, in order to compare it's performance to my first McCain ad. As I promised earlier today, here is the new ad:
The progressive blogosphere spends a lot of time discussing campaign strategy. Every day, thousands of times over, we critique campaign messaging, debate the quality of ads, muse about targeting strategies, and suggest new lines of attack. The problem is, as Matt has often pointed out, the only help the Obama campaign wants comes in the form of campaign donations and volunteers to work on field operations. So, no one is really listening to our suggestions. We are not making a difference on messaging.
There isn't anything wrong with donating to the Obama campaign, or in volunteering to do voter registration, phonebanking, or other forms of field work. Those are important things to do, and there is real pride and dignity to being a political volunteer. The problem is, if you feel like I do, that it just isn't enough. For one thing, the Obama campaign has been consistently losing ground for the past two plus months, so it doesn't feel like what it is doing is working. Second, not everyone's best political skills lay in field organizing, especially if, like me, you are introverted (I've done some real field work, but it has been painful). Third, donating to a campaign is often a one-off endeavor, and lacks of satisfaction of continued engagement. Besides, maybe the money won't be spent effectively, anyway. Finally, if the netroots are just taking orders from large Democratic institutions, then we really just don't seem like a very interesting movement to me. Whatever happened to taking on the system and changing it with people power?
Taking the solid advice of Open Left commenter Will, rather than just complaining about this state of affairs, I decided to start running my own ads. Instead of feeling disempowered by narratives I can't do much to change and messaging that doesn't speak for me, now I have my own anti-McCain ads. The two ads will appear across the entire state of Pennsylvania, on about three-dozen different Google keyword searches for John McCain and Sarah Palin. It feels really good, too. Here are the ads:
It is my money, my message, my targeting. Based on the keywords and cost-per-click rate that I chose, Google estimated that my ads will result in 25 click-thrus a day, costing me a little under $10 a day. However, the ads will be viewed by exponentially more people and, because of the keywords I chose, only by people looking for information on the campaign. Further, as I learn what messages work and which ones don't, if I want to fit daily talking points or the latest scandal, I can easily change the ad. Also, I can change the locations where I am targeting on a moment's notice.
You can do this too. In fact, you should do this too. In the extended entry, I explain why and how.
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