Online Media Daily notes an interesting phenomenon: Even though the next presidential election is still 22 months away, at least two candidates have already bought advertising on popular political blogs - nearly a year earlier in the cycle than ocurred in the 2004 election.
OMD notes that former Sen. John Edwards and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have both recently started running ads on political blogs, via the ad network Blogads. Blogads founder Henry Copeland says presidential candidates didn't start buying blog ads until around 11 months before the vote.
Edwards, a Democrat, is advertising on Daily Kos, MyDD, AmericaBlog, and Crooks and Liars. His ads offer links to Edwards' video message from New Orleans announcing his candidacy, which is hosted on YouTube, and also to his campaign web site.
Romney, a Republican, is advertising on OutsideTheBeltway.com, RightWingNews.com, the Townhall.com blog network, and Powerline.com.
Romney's blog ads are "driven by our recognition of a very unique and motivated audience among New Media devotees," says Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden. "Our blog ads help reach this audience and drive traffic to our mittromney.com website and provide more information about Mitt Romney, his campaign, his ideas and how they can then in turn join our effort."
Good move?
Michael Bassik, a political consultant with MSHC Partners, thinks so, telling OMD, "There's no better place to reach political junkies so far away from November 2008."
I think that's half right. Blog ads do get a candidate front-and-center with political junkies, and ad space is relatively inexpensive compared to traditional media formats, even on most of the big-traffic blogs. And by advertising on blogs that lean ideologically in the same direction, the campaigns are reaching an audience at least generically amenable to the candidate.
But advertising on just a few big political blogs is taking only one step were more are needed. Campaigns need to reach out to the long tail and advertise on a few hundred of the most popular lesser-trafficked political blogs. Doing so would cost campaigns virtually pennies as compared to their $100 million-plus budgets, yet by spreading the advertising among many blogs, the candidates would reach readers who might not read Powerline or RightWingNews.com every day and would benefit from repetion as blog readers would see their ads over and over as they surfed the conservative/libertarian neighborhoods of the blogosphere.
Romney and/or other Republican candidates spreading the blog ad love to more blogs also would help strengthen the conservative/libertarian blogosphere as a media force for the long campaign season ahead.
How so? Well, I don't have data but as a blogger with five years experience and lots of contact with other political bloggers I am virtually certain that a blogger who lands a little ad revenue is more likely to stick with blogging - and maybe even blog more often - than bloggers who don't get some ad bucks.
And as a multitude of consistently updated blogs are part of what drives memes and themes in the blogosphere and pushes things higher in the online search results, the candidate who bought all those blog ads stands to benefit from a bigger wave of online coverage - a wave they helped create by spreading their blog ad money around a little wider.
A final thought: The Blogads service doesn't reach all political blogs. No ad network does. I'd advise the Romney and Edwards campaigns - and the other candidates - to also advertise via Pajamas Media's blog advertising network.
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