Political Technology

In a trend I discussed a number of times on this blog, you can see how online social networks are continuing a direct play into becoming full fledged mobile services... Today Fox announced that MySpace Mobile will launch across all US carriers Monday... and this story touches another trend, the rise of mobile micro-targeted search...which will be the key play for the new mobile service. Both trends will have a serious impact on political outreach and political ad buying over time. Here is the story:

"Fox Interactive Media announced an advertising-funded mobile incarnation of its social networking service MySpace, part of parent company News Corp.'s wider bid to generate ad revenues via the mobile web. Fox Interactive Media already offers a premium MySpace Mobile service via operators including AT&T, Helio and Vodafone--the new ad-supported service set to launch Monday will operate across all U.S. carriers and will enable subscribers to send and receive messages and friend requests, comment on photos, post alerts, update blogs, and find and search for friends. At launch Fox Interactive Media will focus on sponsorships and banner ads, but eventually will move to more targeted advertising based on user registration data--local ads based on GPS data are also scheduled to follow.

In addition to the free MySpace service, Fox Interactive Media will introduce ad-funded mobile versions of FoxSports.com, gaming site IGN, movie site RottenTomatoes.com and AskMen.com--several local TV affiliates will also launch free sites, and in the weeks ahead, image-sharing site Photobucket will make its mobile debut as well."

The big push of the New Politics Institute’s 2006 New Tools Campaign was to shift ad spending from broadcast TV to cable. This controversial political advice followed a trend firmly established in the private sector – to follow the audience’s migration to the more targeted medium. Many politicos did adapt last cycle by following our argument about why to buy cable.

This year we focus on how to buy cable, and how to buy it smart. Cable is more difficult to buy than broadcast, and so we developed a practical checklist that walks you through a step-by-step process that literally tells you what questions to ask. This memo is useful for anyone in the business of advocating for progressive values.

Read this new “Buy Cable Smart, A Checklist” memo, written by Ali Weise, NDN Executive Director. Ali was the Campaign Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Deputy Director of the DCCC’s Independent Expenditure Campaign in 2006, which spent over $55 million in television advertising last cycle to help Democrats win the House of Representatives.

Watch Weise (below) give a short talk that summarizes the recommendations at the kick-off event for this year’s tools campaign in Washington DC late this summer.

Finally, the memo ends with some thoughts on how the whole progressive movement might adapt to the shift to more cable advertising, including gearing up to produce more ads (that hit narrower targets), and reevaluating the financial incentives for media consultants who get paid the same for cable as they do for the easier broadcast. Something has to give.

As always, please send this memo around to whoever might benefit, and stay connected to our evolving body of work at the New Politics Institute.

Thanks.

Peter Leyden

 From today's NY Times...

"A new study released this week found that young people are more likely to vote by 4.2 percentage points if they receive a text message reminding them to show up to the polls.

The survey found that most of the recipients, and especially Hispanics, found the message helpful — unlike their reaction e-mail. But here’s the result that could be the most compelling to the campaigns: Each additional vote generated by the text message cost an average $1.56.

Compare that to some phone calls, which, for the same level of effectiveness, cost about $20 a vote. Door-to-door canvassing, which can increase young voter turnout by 7-to-9 percent, comes in at around $30 a vote.

'Text messaging can be another tool in the toolbox,' said Sujatha Jahagirdar, the project director for Student Public Interest Research Group’s Young Voters Project, one of the groups involved in the study."

Reed Hundt, the former Chariman of the FCC, writes about the true larger trends for mobile media and services over at the TPMCafe...here is a key quote from his posting:

"The inevitable corollary will be that mobile devices provide the primary mode of access to the Internet. Mobile computing devices -- laptops and "tweeners" (objects between cellphones and laptops) -- will become the primary means of using microprocessor power, at least for consumers.

The means for forming groups, gathering information, developing beliefs, sharing values, and taking action --what we apprehend now as social networks -- will become as widespread and effective as mobile communications itself. The handheld device will become the essential technology for performing the mechanical job of interacting within and between societies.

No single part of government in the United States pays much attention to these trends ...the implications of the new mobile web vastly outstrip government's capability to think about those implications ...Businesses in this field, on the other hand, are well aware of what's going on."

Online advertising has many advantages over print and broadcast advertising, including super precise targeting and interaction with the audience. No wonder the sector is booming, with 25 percent growth in just the last year. So the New Politics Institute is focusing its first New Tools spotlight of the fall on this huge opportunity for progressives, with a call to “Advertise Online.”

Read “The Huge Opportunity for Online Political Ads,”  a terrific practical memo that introduces those in politics to online advertising, with a focus on the most popular forms, search ads, and display ads like banners and blogads. Even those who already are buying online will learn some great tips.

Or watch video of Henry Copeland, the founder of the pioneering company Blogads and a coauthor of the piece, as he gives an entertaining and informative 10-minute talk on the subject at the kick off event of this year’s New Tools campaign in late summer.

Copeland, whose Blogads connects about 1300 blogs to a wide range of private sector advertisers as well as some political early adopters, will make some blog posts on this topic this week. Check out his first post on the New Politics Institute website’s front page.

While there, check out other memos and video of the 8 New Tools that progressives can immediately take advantage of in this campaign. They range from "Go Mobile" to “Buy Cable,” and each week this fall we will spotlight one of them.

We hope you will spread the word through your networks and help everyone make the shift from the old politics to the new. And stay connected to our work at the New Politics Institute. Thanks.

Peter Leyden

In another sign of the tech centric nature of the “next generation” of voters… A recent survey of “tweens” showed their most desired items to buy as they go back to school…

69% of the students aged between 7 - 12 years old “say they strongly desire a cell phone to complete their back-to-school wares, even naming the new iPhone as one of their choices.”

“When asked what one item they most wanted before hearing the first school bell, the 10-12 year olds who responded to the online survey listed cell phones and computers above their interests for a new backpack or book bag…”

And this is part of a larger trend:

“…Compared to the 2006 ShopLocal survey for teenagers ages 13-17, there was an 18 percent increase among those who said they most wanted a new cell phone and a 15 percent decrease in those who most wanted clothing or accessories.”

So maybe the Republicans are going to put up a fight in the new tools space after all. After repeatedly watching the Dems innovate with new internet tools, Mitt Romney’s campaign has broken out with an initiative to allow supporters to create their own television ads. The campaign is using Jumpcut, which Yahoo bought last year, as the tool for “mashing up” video, audio and photos in creative ways. The campaign provides a base of content to use, but they also encourage people to upload their own material to remix.

“Mash-ups” refer to repurposing material meant for one thing to communicate another. It’s similar to the more familiar “remixing” of music from original songs into new creations. The mash-up technique has been used somewhat in politics, though not in official campaigns. The most famous example is the “Vote Different” remake of the Apple 1984 done by a person who remained anonymous for several weeks earlier this year. Moveon blazed a trail in the 2004 campaign by creating a contest to create a TV ad about “Bush in 30 Seconds.” However, all the submissions were original and there was no material provided to create the ads via a mash-up.

The Romney campaign is drawing off both strands and creating a contest where people can use official material in news ways. This has its pros and cons. The good side is that it allows many more people to potentially get involved because they have all the tools and material at their disposal and don’t have to shoot original video, etc. The risk is that people hostile to the campaign might hijack the material and put anti-Romney messages up. This actually happened last year in an attempt by Chevy to get regular people to make ads about their Tahoe. Somebody organized a bunch of environmentalists who used the clips of the car to create ads lambasting the gas-guzzling vehicles. (See the NPI talk by Julie Bergman Sender for more on this episode.)

Despite the risks, Romney is going down the right path. The most successful candidates will be those who can harness the energy and creativity of large numbers of American citizens. No one candidate or small team of consultants can pull off an election victory these days. They need the ideas, passions and efforts of many, many people working together for a long, long time.

Peter Leyden

"Affinity Points" based services aren't new: from "Frequent Flier Miles" to "Xbox Live Achievement Points," they've existed in plenty of different forms. But this is the first time to my knowledge that online based affinity points have launched as part of a major Presidential campaign... It is a newly launched feature on the Barack Obama site.

So on your profile on their site you now get your total points to date and your overall ranking compared to other supporters. Here is their description of the new feature:

"Today we’re unrolling a new way to measure your impact on the campaign: points in the My.BarackObama network. Just about every action you can take on My.BarackObama now will give you points to make it easier to see all the hard work you’re putting in to make this campaign succeed. If you host an event, that’ll show up on your profile and you’ll get 20 points. Write a blog post and you’ll get 15....Adding a points system to My.BarackObama is just a simple way to measure the impact you are having day in and day out on the campaign. You deserve credit and recognition for your involvement and this is just one way to make it clearer how much you’re doing."

It's a smart addition that will likely become a common piece of the web campaign platforms...

A GMI Poll was just released on the effect of Social Networks like Myspace and Facebook on the 2008 election. It had some very interesting findings:

"The poll revealed that 17 percent of consumers have looked at presidential candidates' MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking pages."
and that "it's not just youngsters who are checking out the candidates' profiles: 62 percent who say they've looked at a candidate's MySpace or Facebook page are over 30."

After visiting a candidate's page, more than half (53 percent) say they are more likely to vote for the candidate.... Sixty-four percent say they felt like they personally knew the candidate better after visiting their social networking page...."

And also: "41 percent say MySpace and other social networking sites will affect the presidential race and 51 percent think voter turnout among young adults will increase due to social networking sites like MySpace."

The Times ran a rather remarkable article today about the future of advertising.  An excerpt:

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.

Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion six months ago.

Now Mr. Kenny is reshaping the digital advertising strategy for the entire Publicis worldwide conglomerate, which includes agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and the Starcom MediaVest Group and the global accounts of companies like Procter & Gamble, American Express, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

More simply put, the goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.

“Our intention with Digitas and Publicis is to build the global platform that everybody uses to match data with advertising messages,” Mr. Kenny said. “There is a massive transformation happening in the way consumers live and the data we have about them, but very few companies have stepped up to it yet.”

Publicis announced last Tuesday an important step in its digital plan: the acquisition of the Communication Central Group, a digital agency in China founded in 1995, for an undisclosed amount. The agency, to be called Digitas Greater China, will give Publicis a foothold in the Chinese advertising market, which analysts within Publicis estimate is growing at about 20 percent a year, much faster than global growth in the market, which hovers around 5 percent a year.

“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years,” Mr. Kenny said. “These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.”

Beyond the growth potential, Publicis executives see these economies as important sources of low-cost labor for a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.

Greater production capacity is needed, Mr. Kenny says, to make enough clips to be able to move away from mass advertising to personalized ads. He estimates that in the United States, some companies are already running about 4,000 versions of an ad for a single brand, whereas 10 years ago they might have run three to five versions. And he predicts that the number of iterations will grow as technology improves....