I imagine many political bloggers would love the chance of making some dosh
from their online discourse and interaction. If British politicians follow the example of what is happening in America, the chances are it could happen here too.
Former Senator John Edwards and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (pic)have both recently started running ads on political blogs, via the ad network Blogads.
Edwards’ blog ads began appearing earlier this month on sites including Daily Kos, MyDD, AmericaBlog, and Crooks and Liars. The ads offer links to Edwards’ video message from New Orleans announcing his candidacy, hosted on YouTube, and to his campaign site.
His campaign team also plan to use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, as well as SMS messaging to bring people to the campaign site. He said the Web was central to their goal of creating a truly national grassroots campaign in 2007 and 2008.
Romney has also run a series of blog ads on right and libertarian-leaning blogs, including OutsideTheBeltway.com, RightWingNews.com, the Townhall.com blog network, and Powerline.com.
Romney’s campaigners are planning an “aggressive, innovative and integrated campaign” that will include search marketing. He hopes the blog ads will reach the most influential voters.
Do you think it will happen here too, that this kind of campaigning and advertising will be effective? Will the message mainly reach political geeks when we need to target voters who don’t read political blogsites? Besides using the social networking sites, should they be advertising on non-political sites too in an attempt to engage with wider audiences? I suspect it will only be the big guys like Iain and Guido, as well as ConservativeHome, that will be used by our Tory politicians if it did happen here.
Incidentally, it seems that Romney is a Mormon, which would make him the first Mormon American president if successful. So why has he only got one wife?
Ellee, it doesn’t matter that they are ‘political geeks’ as research suggests that bloggers also tend to be influencers. The value isn’t just in the coversation online, but the conversation and debate it creates in the offline world.
That said I don’t see a big roll for advertising on political blogs. Iain is highly unlikely to carry a Labour Party ad, just as LabourHome is unlikely to carry a Tory one. Most of the best political blogs have partisan authors.
Interesting personally I’m not sure- for a start we don’t have as well developed a primary audience as the Americans do which doesn’t help though the Tory leadership was a new frontier- it’ll be fascinating to watch the Labour deputy leadership contest to see how things develop- Alex Hilton said he’d been recruited to run Hillary Benn’s campaign so maybe cyber campaigning is seen as a good idea now. It might take more primary elections- it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the major parties next change their leaders I guess say in around 2008 (assuming Brown is crowned) and what happens then.
Stuart, I just envisaged Tory’s advertising on Tory blog sites and Labour on theirs too.
Gracchi, That’s interesting news about Hillary Benn, shows he’s taking social media seriously.
What a brilliant idea. I want the Chipmunk on mine.
It won’t happen at the moment, but if UK blogs reach the power of influence as some of the US blogs; you never know.
Ellee can I invite you to sign up to MessageSpace?
If it is good enough for Iain…
Shhhsh:
http://messagespace.co.uk/blog/join
Can’t promise you the same size of monthly n cheque…
Can’t see political advertising of that sort catching on in these parts, frankly.
Re Romney, polygamy is illegal even in Utah, and the Church of Jesus of the etc etc no longer sanctions it, although there are schismatics from it who do. As a footnote, bars in Utah cannot refer to spirits, instead they are called ‘ghosts’. I am NOT making this up.
I hope to god this never happens. The UK & Australia can pride themselves on their political systems, god help us if they ever are influenced by the almighty dollar such as America.
Croydonian, I’ve been to Utah and had a few “dry” days there while on a ski trip to nearby Snowbird, said to have the best powder snow in the world. I didn’t come across any “ghosts”, I decided not to risk breaking their laws.
I can see why some naive politicians will think advertising on blogs would be a good think, but it’s more about building supporters through/within your network. That’s why tools such as blogging are replacing advertising in the business world innit?
Plus I would have reservations about voting for ahyone who advertised on Guido’s site…; ) which reminds me. Did I see an M&S ad on there a while back!?