The Web Pays Attention to Long-Shots

You no longer have to be a front-runner to get people to notice you. Long-shot candidates are making creative use of the web, not in spite of the fact that they're long-shots, but because of it.

In Democrat Chris Dodd's web site's coverage of the Presidential debates, he includes the "Talk Clock": a meter that measures how often candidates got to talk during debates, and the results are disproportionate.



Meanwhile, Republican Tom Tancredo (who?) has been causing quite a stir on blogs and in news stories with a new fear-mongering ad, intended for cable stations, that converges illegal immigration and terrorism:



This miles-over-the-top ad seems like a cry for attention from a long-shot candidate. Because of the web, though, Tancredo certainly got the attention he wanted with this ad.

Ads In Unlikely Places

The lesson learned here is to be careful where you place your internet ads. The New York Times discovered that conservative, anti-gay-marriage Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has unintentionally been putting advertisements on Gay.com. Oh, the irony.

Romney's ads have also shown up on FanFiction.net, a site for fan-written stories based on popular TV shows, books, and movies. Fanfiction notoriously includes gay relationships, sexual promiscuity, and other things Romney would disapprove of. So next time you're reading a fanfiction about the pornographic adventures of Harry Potter, remember to vote for Mitt Romney!

The newness of internet advertising seems to be what's to blame for this blunder. Though the web is huge now, savvy political advertising on it still has to catch up. As the article points out, it's easy to lose control of your audience on the internet.

And I can only imagine the bizarre presence of Romney's ad on the website:

Internet-Only Ad: A Smart Move?

On the five-year anniversary of the often-referenced Congressional vote on the Iraq war, Barack Obama has made an interesting choice. He decided to release an ad about his opposition to the war both then and now, entitled "Blank Check" - an internet-only ad. Why internet-only?

Well, in today's post on the New York Times blog The Caucus, Jeff Zeleny points out that "the ad is largely aimed at Obama supporters or people who are already a part of his vast online community." Zeleny believes that this is because all that can be said about the issue has already been said to the broader audiences.

I think that, seeing how strong Obama's supporters are in the online realm, there's more to it than Zeleny suggests. Instead of putting the ad on TV, the ad could gain internet popularity through word of mouth from his supporters. People are more likely to pay attention to the ad this way, rather than passively seeing it on TV and then forgetting about it.

Strength. Innovation. Boring.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney is having a contest where users can make their own campaign ad for him online. Although the contest ended September 17th, a winner has not yet been announced.

While this video contest is a commendable idea, none of the videos I watched impressed me. The videos contain all the elements we're used to seeing in professional campaign ads: vague and positive words like "strength" and "innovation," sound clips from the candidate accompanied by phrases in all-caps that jump out at the viewer, and random patriotic images like the Statue of Liberty or the American flag. While all of the videos I looked at had these elements, this video epitomizes what I'm talking about - and it's the one that got the most "loves" on the site.

I think that this contest could, in theory, be an opportunity to get creative and try a new angle with campaign ads. Since the internet is more personal and accessible than other media, I thought the ads should be too. Instead, though, it's amateurs imitating the typical professional campaign ads we normally see on TV.

The problem might not be in the contestants themselves - I'd say it's more in the rules laid out by the Romney for President people and the video clips they provided. Though they want to look hip and trendy by sponsoring this internet contest, they also don't want to stray from the conventional campaign ad.