Internet ad spending among political candidates will increase 83.9 percent in 2008 from 2006, to $73 million, making it the fastest growing category, but it still represents only 1.6 percent of the total media spend, according to Leo Kivijarv, VP/research for PQ Media, which released Political Media Buying 2008: Preliminary Forecast Analysis last week.
Broadcast TV, direct mail, radio, cable TV and newspapers all have larger spends, with broadcast TV leading the way with $2.3 billion, 51.3 percent of the total spend.
The report covers all political spending and says the presidential race accounts for 37.1 percent of the total spend. Kivijarv declined to say how much the presidential candidates will spent on the Internet. “A lot is modeled on estimates and we’re not comfortable sharing the information with the media and the public,” he said.
He said the candidates are using the Internet primarily as a fund-raising vehicle, although they are beginning to run display and online video ads as well. In this election cycle, three-quarters of the Internet activity is fund-raising related, while 90 percent was so in 2006, he said. He said www.blogads.com is the most popular vehicle the candidates use to place ads at specific sites.
The main reason the Internet spend is small for political candidates is that “the Internet is more adaptable to national ad campaigns than local,” Kivijarv said. “Political campaigns have become very focused on specific DMAs and zip codes in their media buys. That’s where the net causes problems because it doesn’t focus on local ad media, except for the online presence of newspapers.”
He said ad networks are unable to offer local buys. “They’re more theme oriented than geographically oriented,” he said. “They can reach women or wine drinkers, but there are none for cities.” Meanwhile, advertisers can easily buy TV and radio ads by city.
While political candidates are using social networks like YouTube, which are running debates, the candidates haven’t been advertising there. “They haven’t transferred over to ad buying. Where do you place ads on Facebook or YouTube? Candidates are active on social networks but it’s difficult to buy ads there because they don’t know where to go to drive traffic and they don’t want to be near material that’s disturbing.”
Finally, “the guys in charge of media buying have been doing it for years, so it’s easy to buy TV, but they’re not willing to experiment,” he said. “Political campaigns have their head stuck in the sand. Younger candidates will go online more often, but long term candidates are less likely to do it.”
“Actual spending on Internet advertising will remain a relatively small share of media budgets for most campaigns,” the report concluded.
Several Movies To Look Forward To At Sundance 2025
The Sundance Film Festival catalogue can be overwhelming to navigate, with around 90 feature films playing across 11 days.
This year the Robert Redford-founded independent film festival has something for everyone: Comedies, dramas, horrors, documentaries, the intriguingly undefinable (there's a movie about cabbage smuggling called "Bubble & Squeak" and one in which a woman becomes a chair and everyone likes her better that way called "By Design").
Here are a few of the films we're looking forward to most:
"Atropia"
This is a film that the producers would rather audiences experience blind, but the brief synopsis is that Alia Shawkat plays an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility who falls for a soldier playing an insurgent. Luca Guadagnino produced the film, written and directed by Hailey Gates. It also stars Callum Turner and Chloë Sevigny. When asked how she likes to describe the film, Gates told The Associated Press that, "Sometimes I describe it as a military industrial complex romantic comedy."
"Bunnylovr"
This film delves into the life of a Chinese-American "cam girl," kind of a virtual sex worker, who is navigating a toxic relationship with a client while attempting to repair her relationship with her dying father. Katarina Zhu wrote, directed and stars in the film, alongside Rachel Sennott.
"2000 Meters to Andriivka"
Pulitzer Prize-winner Mstyslav Chernov took audiences into the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the Oscar-winning "20 Days in Mariupol" and is back with another dispatch from the ongoing war. In "2000 Meters to Andriivka," a joint production between the AP and Frontline, Chernov turns his lens to Ukrainian... Read More