Online Political Campaigns Languish

So sue me

When the going gets tough, national political candidates seem to be approving their TV campaigns over their online campaigns. While online is set to experience a good bit of growth this election season, the gross spend increase on the internet is shaping to again be the tail of the dog. TV’s budget share may be slipping to just over half of the dollars spent, but with $3.03 dollars projected to be spent this season, the internet’s $73 million share is still a rounding error.Media buyers with political clients tell MediaBuyerPlanner that the major online plans are being requested, but that the final approval - often by candidates or campaign managers - fails to come. Meanwhile, those same planners return to their telephones from watching campaign television drops from their office kitchens.One factor that may play a negative role for the online publishers remains their industry’s relatively flexible lead times. When campaigns find themselves in foggy media environments, often the first decision that they are forced to make is whether or not to hold onto TV avails. Once made, that decision tends to snowball into a media run, whereas the online publishers never forced such a mid-term time commitment on the campaigns. Working in “internet time” gives campaigns the flexibility to overspend on their TV budgets, knowing that the online avails will be their later, if additional budget becomes available.ValueClick felt the need to send out late last night a release reminding candidates that there was plenty of local-targeted and otherwise sliced media available for them on the internet. That firm reserved 300 million adviews per day between now and the February 5 Super Tuesday targeted in those relevant states.