McCain/Obama Victories Related to AdWords Campaigns?
Hello. I just finished reading a very interesting article about Google’s AdWords and the 2008 presidential election. This election year, more than any other previous election in history, search advertising will influence the vote. Some even say that spending on ads will either make or break the election.
Peter Greenberger, Google’s political ad man was interviewed about this presidential election’s tie to paid search ads. He believes that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was actually hurt by failing to consitently use search advertising through the primary season. He also believes that the success of both Barack Obama and John McCain winning the primaries for their respective parties was due in large part to savvy search advertising. The McCain and Obama campaigns have driven users looking for information about the candidates to their official Web sites through sponsered links. Once these users are taken to the official campaign Web sites, they donate money, volunteer, or register for newsletters.
So the two candidates for president are set to spend more money on search advertising, than any other political campaign in history.
Every presidential candidate in the 2008 primary election season, on the left and on the right, used Google AdWords. Certain candidates understood the importance sooner and began using it much earlier than others, but they all used it. Obama was very early to start this stategy. He stuck with it and was able to build a huge list of supporters. Hillary Clinton’s campaign started it later on in the season, and ending up cutting it off during the last two quarters of 2007, during which time both Obama and McCain’s campaign continued to use Google AdWords. The Clinton campaign then decided to relaunch their AdWords campaign once the primaries were already well underway. This, argues Greenberger, had a huge effect on how many smaller donors they could count on. He says they “had already dug themselves into a huge hole.” Clinton stopped and started her AdWords campaign several times before she really realized the benefits of it. By that time, could it have been too late? Both McCain and Obama understood early on the importance of using paid search ads. It is not a coincidence that the two savviest presidential campaigns with Google have won the primaries for the party and are now the candidates for President of the United States.
Even when John McCain’s campaign seemed over and during his darkest days, his campaign continued to spend money on Google Adwords. Even when the polls showed that interest in his campaign had slowed, he was still ready to capture interest through paid search ads.
Both candidates have used a very aggressive keyword strategy. There has been a deliberate attempt to geo-target and expand the electorate. Obama’s campaign used geo-targeting to users in Texas during the Texas primary. When users searched for voter information, they were shown an Obama ad. Greenberger believes that this stategy will be used often during the general election, especially in the swing states.
It’s going to very interesting to watch!!
