Political Technology

I released the following statement to the media earlier today:

"Today’s announcement by Barack Obama that he has raised $25 million shows that Democrats are clearly ahead of Republicans in adapting to the new opportunities and realities of 21st century American politics. 

It appears that the collective Democratic field has raised about 50 percent more than the collective Republican field.  When the official FEC filings come out next week, there is little doubt that Democrats will far exceed Republicans in the number of people who have donated as well.

No matter how you measure it - money raised, sign-ups on social networking sites, people at events, downloads on YouTube and of course as the recent Pew poll showed, party identification - Democrats are structurally ahead of the Republicans in mastering the new politics of the 21st century. 

The 100 dollar revolution that started in 2003 continues to radically change American politics.  A combination of more states voting earlier in the primary process and an acceleration of the adoption of new tools that are making it easier for people to participate in politics will mean that by late February of 2008, tens of millions of Americans will have voted, donated, volunteered, blogged, signed up or taken some sort of action on behalf of a candidate. 

There also should be little doubt that effectively managing and tapping into the new prominence of average people in our 21st century politics is going to be one of the most critical tests of our political leaders.  

Another measure of how Democrats are better adapting to the new realities of the 21st century is the historic diversity of the Democratic Presidential field: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden look like the diverse America of the 21st century."

Social networking is going to play a big role in the politics of this cycle, but I think having a primary on MySpace might be going a bit far. We’ll see.

The MySpace primary seems to me to be gimmicky at this point, and I hope that does not turn off political people from the idea that social networking tools can be a powerful way to do what politics has always been about – connecting up people and their “social networks” of family and friends behind a campaign or candidate.

I made that point in an interview I did today around the breaking news. Separate the importance of social networking from the potential relevance of the MySpace primary. They should be evaluated on their own terms as two separate things.

There is no question that social networking will be big in politics – not the least because it is a critical medium to reach the Millennial Generation, that increasingly important young constituency.

There are a lot of questions about how a MySpace primary will fare in a real-world primary world. But you never know. I could be wrong….

Peter Leyden   

As television audiences become increasingly segmented through technologies such as cable, DVRs, and satellite TV, a broadcast-only strategy of reaching viewers just doesn’t work anymore. Satellite TV subscribers, for example, are among the most difficult for political advertisers to reach because ads can only be bought nationally on the non-local channels.

Simply put, while a political advertiser can buy ads on popular cable channels such as TNT, TBS, and A&E by buying through their local cable company, it’s been impossible to buy ads on those very same stations on satellite networks.

Today’s announcement by Google and Echostar could change this dynamic. Google announced today that it will sell TV ads on the 125 stations distributed by Echostar Communications’ DISH network.

The TV ads will work much like Google’s online search ads do – advertisers specify how much they’re willing to pay, and through an automated auction, the ads with the highest price are selected. What’s more, just like in the online search ads, advertisers can choose by geographic region:

Mr. Desai said the television ad system would work much like Google’s existing online and offline advertising systems. EchoStar would make some unspecified amount of air time available to Google’s advertisers. Advertisers or agencies would upload video spots to the system along with their desired target audience or network and would specify the price they are willing to bid for the air time.

Google’s ad system would then select the winning ads and play them on the air. Using information collected by EchoStar’s set-top satellite boxes, it will be able to give advertisers a report showing how many people viewed any ad and whether users tuned it out in the first few seconds.

Google will also use information collected by EchoStar to deliver the ads to their target audiences more precisely, the companies said.

Advertisers will not be able to designate specific households, but will be able to choose individual networks like ESPN or MTV and a time of day. Alternatively, they could choose a demographic group or geographic region, and Google’s system would schedule the ads across a variety of networks.

This is still a pilot program, but it could be the beginning of a significant change in political TV ad buying.

Below is the email that went out to NDN and NPI members earlier today, highlighting NPI's newest report, an innovative video report "The Political Web Video World."  Watch the video below:

Web video and the power of user-generated content created by cheap digital tools has taken the political world by storm in recent weeks.

With that in mind, The New Politics Institute partnered with PoliticsTV.com and created a new kind of think tank product that we’re calling a “video report.” We've created a web video that gives an overview of the entire political web video world, breaking it down into a dozen categories that are seriously beginning to impact politics today.

Each category is explained and analyzed, and then portions of an example or two are laid out. You can watch the entire overview piece of all 12 categories taken together, or view each category as its own video piece. There's also a short accompanying written report that gives the link to every web video referenced.

NPI soon will be holding an event in Washington DC that will gather some of the most knowledgeable people on political web videos to deepen our understanding of how these powerful new tools work. More information on that event will be coming soon. For now, the report draws on the longtime experience of PoliticsTV.com’s CEO and Executive Producer Dan Manatt, and yours truly.

We welcome feedback on this innovative video report, and expect to do more experimentation the year ahead. Keep an eye on the New Politics Institute website, at www.newpolitics.net, where you can find work from a community that’s thinking deeply and strategizing about how politics is being changed by the transformation of technology, media and the demographics of the country. Please join us there throughout the coming political cycle – which promises to be a very interesting cycle indeed.

Links:

Click here or on the picture to watch the entire video

Watch individual sections of the video

Read the accompanying written report with links to web video discussed in the video report

Read Julie Bergman-Sender's NPI paper Viral Video in Politics: Case Studies on Creating Compelling Video

Read Simon Rosenberg's essay TV ads feel different this cycle, and are

Watch other video content from the New Politics Institute 

Visit PoliticsTV on the web: http://www.politicstv.com

Visit NPI on the web: http://www.newpolitics.net

The Washington Post analyzes John Edwards' embrace of social networking sites. Comparing his efforts to the rest in the 2008 field, the article shows that while Sen. Barack Obama might be more popular, Edwards is more visible:

All the presidential hopefuls are online. Everyone's got a Web site. A few hired full-time bloggers and videographers. Most have MySpace profiles, just a click away from "friending" a supporter. Yet Edwards has taken his Internet presence a step further, fully exploiting the unknown possibilities (and known pitfalls) of the social Web, online strategists say. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), judging by the number of friends on MySpace or number of views of his YouTube videos, may be the most popular online candidate, Republican or Democrat. But Edwards arguably has the most dynamic Web presence -- he's everywhere, doing everything.

But exactly where is he?

...the former senator is signed up in at least 23 socnets -- more than any other presidential candidate. And that's not counting John Edwards One Corps, his own networking site that campaign officials say has 20,000 members and 1,200 chapters across the country.

For more information on how candidates can leverage the internet and its possibilities, check out the work of our New Politics Institute.

Google’s attempts to evolve its advertising offering from the online into the offline worlds got a promising review in the New York Times. The short version of what’s going on is that Google is taking its online targeting ability, enhanced by technology, and trying to evolve it into the advertising world of traditional media.

One frontier is traditional radio, otherwise known as terrestrial radio (because  of the various new kinds like web-based radio and satellite radio). The Times piece interviews some of the early clients in the experiments and shows that they are encouraged that is seems to be working, thought the jury is still out. There is also a lot of worry from the traditional players and some legitimate concerns about whether it will ultimately work in a significant way.

Another frontier is the newspaper world, and those experiments seem to be going even better than radio. That makes sense because newspapers are text based and more fully integrated into the online world anyhow. But it’s interesting to see many of the top papers and chains talking about how it seems to be working.

The final frontier is the biggest one, television. Here’s one paragraph that gives you the sense of what is at stake:

Television advertising could prove particularly fruitful for Google, because the company might be able to combine its technology with that of cable systems to show different ads to different viewers based on demographics or personal interests. The company has said it is conducting a small trial with a few partners.

The point for politics is that all of the traditional broadcast media are evolving to take on more of the targeting capabilities of online advertising. This might take a long while to transition, but the trend is taking shape.

This is a good thing for those political people who take advantage early. It will allow you to use more effective, less expensive advertising to reach the people you need to reach.

Peter Leyden  

For those looking to get a glimpse into where technology is headed, this article from the New York Times highlights an exciting new venture Yahoo is heading up (and one that combines areas we're more than familiar with). The company, which has lagged behind Google in internet search and search advertising, is taking the lead on bringing advertising and web search to mobile phones. To learn more, check out its new software entitled oneSEARCH.

Check out our New Politics Institute for more information on both mobile media and search (here and here). Also check out Media 50 Group, a company that helps folks master this new medium and whose co-founder is NPI fellow Tim Chambers.

UPDATE - the CTIA Wireless Conference is kicking off today, where there is a lot of talk about how to best integrate media with cell phone technology.

MoveOn's "Stop the Falsiness" campaign is a light-hearted mockery of Steven Colbert's send-up of conservative cable news (that's a spoof on a spoof for those of you keeping score at home) and of their own political earnestness.  It's pretty funny stuff, or at least it was until Viacom demanded it be taken off YouTube for alleged copyright violations.  You can watch the video on the satirical campaign's homepage here: http://falsiness.org/ and click here learn more about how MoveOn and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's efforts to get Viacom to stop muzzling online free speech.  You can also read our recent NPI paper on making video for the internet.

It's a sign of how fast the technology and politics are moving that what was meant to be a relatively silly diversion has turned into a flashpoint in the debate over who owns video in the age of the global network. 

Update:  Viacom backed down in a kind of sleazy way.  Whatever, now we can watch the funny:

It's hard to read the news these days - online, in print or otherwise - without hearing from Simon Rosenberg and Peter Leyden on the increasing influence of web video in politics and the end of the broadcast era.  Here's Simon in today's ABC News lead story on the "Hillary 1984" video and the broader phenomenon of web video in politics:

"This ad represents the emergence of a new era in political advertising," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the Washington-based New Democrat Network, an influential party advocacy group.

"It's a condition of 21st century politics," said Rosenberg. "It's a brave new world…the barrier to entry for politics has been lowered and it's much easier for average Americans to participate and engage..."

"It used to be that unless they bought tens of millions of dollars in advertising, you weren't going to be heard," said Rosenberg. "Now, if an ad catches on, on YouTube or wherever, and becomes trendy and exciting, it could have just as much impact," he said...

"This is unsettling, particularly for the candidate," said Rosenberg. "It means that increasingly, the political campaigns are going to be one voice among many, albeit a very loud one," he said.

"They're not going to be in control and there's nothing they can do about that," said Rosenberg...

"The next big thing to watch is broadcast quality video becoming available on mobile phones," said Rosenberg.

"We have no idea what the campaigns are going to look like in Fall 2008 because the velocity of change is increasing," said Rosenberg, noting that the Apple iPhone is scheduled for launch in June 2007.

"Broadband video will be in 80 million phones by 2009," said Rosenberg, "YouTube is going mobile by the end of the year. TiVo will soon allow you to record things off the Internet. Media, including these viral political ads, are going to be viewed in a rapidly accelerated way," he said.

And Peter joins Simon in talking about web video and politics in this Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle:

The compelling "Hillary 1984" video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era."

The ad is proof that "anybody can do powerful emotional ads ... and the campaigns are no longer in control," Rosenberg said. "It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that's a 20th century broadcast model."

It also dramatizes that today, political activists with the Internet as their ammunition have gone from being "just donors to the cause," he said, "to being partners in the fight. And they don't have to wait for permission."

And just a few weeks ago Simon and a number of NPI fellows were featured in an article in The Hill looking at a host of emerging technologies and their effect on politics. 

Stay tuned for more analysis on web video from NPI soon and if you haven't already, make sure to read NPI fellow Julie Bergman-Sender's paper on viral video in politics. 

The Times takes an indepth look at one of the "new tools."   For more on our take on the new tools for politics and how to best use them visit our New Politics Institute website and come back regularly to this blog.  There is little doubt that we are seeing a vastly different way to campaign, advocate and run our politics this year, and the change, if anything, seems to be increasing in velocity.