Election advertising has been a key revenue driver for TV and radio stations, and newspapers, but hasn’t really moved over to the Web. Mostly, the Web is used by campaigns for organizing and fundraising. But OhioElects, a site launched by The Columbus Dispatch’s parent company for the 2006 election, aims to change that.
Powered by Gannett’s Planet Discover, OhioElects performs targeted searches of state, local and national political Web sites as part of its broader political coverage. Hundreds of sites have been crawled and indexed in the site’s first go-round. The site itself hopes to serve as a portal for all types of contextual political advertising.
To date, it isn’t clear how well the site did – although it did secure a sponsorship from The Annenberg Foundation. For the 2008 Presidential election, however, it is contemplating selling political ads on a Google-like bid model, which would allow candidates and parties to bid for ad positioning and placement when search results yield targets like their own names, their opponents’ names, certain institutions, targeted cities, or relevant keywords such as “smoking ordinance.”
The way politicians work they will want all the ads to be priced the same, that being the lowest price paid for any comparable ad!
Interesting post. I just accepted an invitation to participate on behalf of Front Porch Forum in a session at Harvard later this month focused on the internet’s role in local politics. I wonder if OhioElects will attend?
The event is co-hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Sunlight Foundation. I don’t think it’s online anywhere yet.