eMarketer reported last week that online advertising from political campaigns will reach $50 million this year, which is a drop in the bucket compared with the $3 billion that will be spent on TV.
“Our estimates are lower than others,” said Lisa Phillips, an eMarketer senior analyst. She attributes the low figure to the fact that “Hillary Clinton and John McCain just don’t get the Internet.” Meanwhile, she applauds the efforts of Barack Obama, who has spent $2.3 million online thus far, including a major video ad buy in Texas and Ohio before their March primaries. “The spots make perfect sense,” Phillips said. “He’s breaking out his spending with the online videos and he has more web savvy people in his campaign.”
Most of the candidates’ online activity is conducted at their own websites, where they play videos and seek donations. This is “preaching to the converted,” Phillips says, and doesn’t do much to attract new support. It also doesn’t demand an ad spend. Phillips says only two percent of political ad budgets will be spent online.
But she believes more will be spent this fall as the election nears. “If Obama is the Democratic nominee, there will be more or better targeted online advertising in September and October,” she said. “But we’ll see how it plays out. It’s never been tried before.”
DGA Award Nominees Set For TV, Documentaries and Commercials
The Directors Guild of America has unveiled the nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television, Commercials and Documentary for 2024. The winners will be announced at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Saturday, February 8, at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. Garnering multiple nods in their respective categories of Dramatic Series, Comedy Series and Movies for TV/Limited Series were, respectively, Shogun, The Bear and The Penguin. Three of the five nominations in Dramatic Series went to Shogun--Hiromi Kamata for the “Ladies of the Willow World Episode,” Frederick E.O. Toye for “Crimson Sky” and Jonathan van Tulleken for “Anjin.” The other two nods were garnered by Alex Graves for The Diplomat episode “Dreadnought” and Issa Lopez for the “Part 6” installment of True Detective, Night Country. The Bear also took three out of five nominations, in the Comedy Series category: Directors Ayo Edebiri for the “Napkins” episode, Duccio Fabbri for “Doors,” and Christopher Storer for “Tomorrow.” The other two Comedy Series nods went to Lucia Aniello for the Hacks episode “Bulletproof” and Jeff Schaffer for the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode “No Lessons Learned.” And garnering three of the five nods in Movies For Television and Limited Series was The Penguin: Directors Kevin Bray for “Top Hat,” Jennifer Getzinger for “A Great or Little Thing” and Helen Shaver for “Cent’anni.” Rounding out the category were nominationns for Alfonso Curaon on the strength of Disclaimer, and Steven Zaillian for Ripley. Nominated in the Documentary category were Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev for... Read More