Politics & Elections Blog: 2010

Online ads in 2010: Electoral Trends Beyond Wins and Losses

Friday, December 3, 2010

It’s an exciting time to be talking about technology and politics. This week Google’s Elections and Issue Advocacy Team met with a sampling of representatives of some of the best run campaigns and political digital agencies to recap the 2010 election. We all agreed that this election cycle was a breakthrough year for political online advertising. According to Jupiter/Forrester, Americans now spend the same amount of time on the Internet as they do on radio, newspapers and magazines combined, and this past election cycle, we saw politicians take full advantage of this trend.

Online advertising burst onto the political scene in 2008, but in 2010 we saw seismic shifts in the industry. In fact, almost 80% of governor and senatorial candidates were spending online with Google. This is up 900% since 2008. Furthermore, 20 of the top 25 independent expenditure or issue advocacy groups invested in online advertising with Google this cycle.

We saw politicians innovate and find new ways to engage voters this election cycle. It’s more important to understand what campaigns were doing differently online in this election rather than merely where they are putting their ad dollars. So in that spirit here are five major trends we saw this year:

#1 - Online as a Persuasion Tool

Politicians and issue groups learned how to brand online. Campaigns are turning from using the internet purely as a “direct response” mechanism and now employ it as a persuasion medium as well. It’s not news that campaigns know how to raise money online, but increasingly we have seen campaigns and issue groups utilize online ads to drive message and mobilize voters. Consider the growth in Display advertising: in 2010 almost 600 campaigns and issue groups used Display advertising and the Google Display Network targeting key demographics with relevant messages.

#2 - Adoption of Online Up and Down the Ballot

Close to 200 local candidates and ballot initiatives were spending online with Google. In addition, out the 100 most highly visible and competitive congressional races around the country over 85% of those districts were being targeted by online ad campaigns – compared to just a handful one Election cycle before. We even created a Campaign Builder tool so smaller campaigns could get online within minutes.

#3 - Online Video Grows Up, Fast

Campaigns have understood the power of television since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Debate, and in 2010 we have taken the same leap forward by tapping into the power of online video. Candidates and issue groups used YouTube to help extend the lives of their TV campaigns, and started integrating online video into the core strategies. Instream ads which are pre-, mid-, or post-roll ads showing on YouTube partner content was the hottest thing we saw in online political advertising. This ad format wasn’t even available yet on election day 2008, and by election day this year hundreds of campaigns and issue groups were using the medium. Another great story is BIPAC (Business and Industry Political Action Committee) who even took over the YouTube Homepage on Election Day.

#4 - Mobile Advertising Grows Exponentially

We saw over 550 campaigns and issue groups experiment with mobile advertising this election cycle. Every week, tens of millions of people search on Google from their mobile phones and generate hundreds of millions of searches, so it makes sense that campaigns and issue groups want to place ads, where their voters are spending time. And we saw cutting-edge uses of mobile’s powerful geo-targeting capabilities, like Rep. Michele Bachmann targeting Minnesota State Fair-goers with a tailored message about taxes.

#5 - The Network Blast Goes Mainstream

Perhaps the stage was set with Scott Brown’s victory in January and his campaign’s expert use of the Google Network Blast, but one lesson we learned throughout the rest of the cycle was that “The Blast” has gone mainstream. A “Network Blast” is a short-lived ad campaign used for gaining maximum exposure across the web at crucial moments. In the days leading up to the election, there were dozens of blasts-- saturating voters with the right closing message. We saw network blasts in races from as small as state senate to as large as entire battleground states. These campaigns made sure they were top of mind as voters headed to the polls.

The trend-lines are clear and we expect campaigns to be even more aggressive in courting the “Digital American” in 2012.

Posted by Andrew Roos, Account Executive, Google Political Ads

Searching across the campaign trail

Monday, November 1, 2010

Here at Google we’ve seen a rise in searches about candidates and key political issues throughout the 2010 U.S. election cycle. We used Insights for Search and Google Trends to gather top candidate searches and a few regional highlights.

Top 10 most searched for candidates in Google News in the U.S. in October 2010

Meg Whitman
Harry Reid
Rand Paul
Jerry Brown
Sharron Angle
Carl Paladino
Linda McMahon
Nancy Pelosi
Patty Murray
Charlie Crist

Here’s what the top five look like for the last 30 days:

To see what some of the most popular search terms and videos have been across the country, we ran the numbers for a few major markets and political hotspots:

Los Angeles

While Meg Whitman dominated searches during the week of Oct. 18, searches for Jerry Brown increased on Tuesday, Oct. 26, and have since been neck-and-neck with searches for Whitman. (Source)
In the Los Angeles area, news searches for Whitman and Brown are also neck-and-neck. (Source)
Searches for Carly Fiorina are at their highest point of the year, just above the point where they were around the time of the June primary. (Source)
Google News searches for Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina have been rising since Oct. 20. (Search)
Searches for “health care” in the Los Angeles area peaked on Oct. 26. Angelenos are searching for information about immigration and health care more than information about the economy. (Source)
The most-viewed YouTube video in the race for U.S. Senate is Carly Fiorina’s Hot Air: The Movie.
The most-viewed YouTube video in the gubernatorial race is Jerry Brown’s Whitman: Why I Came to California.

San Francisco Bay Area

In the last week, more San Franciscans have been searching for information about Jerry Brown than Meg Whitman. Search traffic for both began rising significantly on Oct. 25, just over a week before the election. (Source)
Meg Whitman leads the Bay Area (and the nation!) for the most searches in Google News. (Source)
Searches for Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina are at their highest point of the entire year, aside from the time period around the June primary. (Source)
In the Bay Area, “health care” became a more popular search term than “economy” last week.
The most-viewed YouTube video in race for the U.S. Senate is Carly Fiorina’s Hot Air: The Movie.
The most-viewed YouTube video in the California gubernatorial race is Jerry Brown’s Whitman: Why I Came to California.

Chicago

In the gubernatorial race, Bill Brady is leading searches in the Chicago area. Searches for both Brady and Pat Quinn began rising significantly at the beginning of October. Searches for Brady are at their highest point of the year. (Source)
In the Senate race, October searches for Mark Kirk peaked on Oct. 26, and searches for Alexi Giannoulias peaked on Oct. 20. (Source)
Over the past month, Chicagoans have been searching for information about issues such as health care, immigration, and the economy more often than either gubernatorial candidate. (Source)
Searches for “absentee ballot” began rising in late September as Chicagoans searched for information about Illinois’ new absentee voting law. Searches for this term peaked on Oct. 26. (Source)

Miami

Searches for gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink have hit their highest point since the August 24 primary. Searches for Rick Scott are at their second-highest point of the year since the primary. (Source)
In Florida’s Senate race, searches for Marco Rubio are at their highest point of the year. Searches for Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek are at their second-highest points of the year. (Source)
In October, searches for information about immigration peaked on Oct. 26, but searches for information about health care started falling the previous day. (Source)
This month, Miami-area searches for “tea party” peaked on Oct. 21. (Source)
The most-viewed YouTube video in the U.S. Senate race is Marco Rubio’s A Generational Choice.
The most-viewed YouTube video in Florida’s gubernatorial race is Rick Scott’s Obama’s Mosque.

New York

In the gubernatorial race, searches for Andrew Cuomo are currently at their highest point of the year. Searches for Carl Paladino reached their highest point of the year on Oct. 11. (Source)
Searches for U.S. Senate candidates Chuck Schumer and Jay Townsend are steadily on the rise. Throughout much of the campaign, New Yorkers have been more likely to search for information about Chuck Schumer, but last week, Townsend surpassed Schumer in search popularity. (Source)
New Yorkers continue to search for more information about Senate special election candidate Kirsten Gillibrand than her opponent Joe DioGuardio. Searches for Gillibrand peaked on Oct. 20 and 21. (Source)
Over the past three months, New Yorkers have consistently searched for more information about immigration and health care than information about the economy.
Searches for “tea party” are nearly at their highest point for the month of October. (Source)

You can also read about more election-related search and video stats on the Official Google Blog and YouTube’s CitizenTube blog.

And don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Elections & Public Sector Team

The 2010 election on YouTube: By the numbers

Monday, November 1, 2010

(Cross-posted from YouTube's CitizenTube blog)

In these 2010 midterm elections, campaigns, voters, and interest groups have continued to innovate new ways to share their political opinions on YouTube. Because YouTube is a platform where anyone can post and share videos globally, you’ve made this platform the vanguard of the political media discussion. Some of these efforts to influence the political dialog on YouTube were more successful than others. Today, we’re sharing who emerged on top of the YouTube elections heap - and we’re going strictly by the numbers.

The top 10 most-viewed videos, sourced from all videos categorized as “News & Politics" on YouTube, are a mixed bag of official campaign videos, user-generated content and videos from interest groups:

1. Congressman Assaults Student on Sidewalk

2. We Are Better than That

3. America Rising - An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

4. President Obama, No One is Laughing in Arizona

5. Language

6. Brewer to Obama: Warning Signs are not Enough

7. Those Voices Don’t Speak for the Rest of Us

8. FCINO: Fiscal Conservative in Name Only

9. Governor Christie Responds to Teacher During Town Hall

10. Arizona Sing-A-Long: Read Immigration Law!

Interestingly, every video in the top ten comes from the Republicans, which is quite a departure from 2008. In addition, immigration was an extremely hot topic on YouTube this year - three out of ten of the most-viewed videos are about the Arizona immigration law (2 came from AZ Governor Jan Brewer).

Now, let’s take a look specifically at the 450 candidates for public office who registered for official Politician channels on YouTube this fall. Here’s a rundown of the top 10 most-viewed Politician channels on YouTube in the last month:

Leading the pack is Christine O’Donnell whose “I’m You” video inspired hundreds of thousands of views... and quite a few parodies. Here's the original:

YouTube Insight allows us to see where the view counts were coming for any individual video. For example, parodies of O’Donnell’s “I’m You” video (like the Gregory Brothers’ “Songify This," above) received millions more views than O’Donnell’s original campaign video nationally, but Insight shows us that O’Donnell still received more views in the state of Delaware than any parody video.

Similarly, the memorable “Why” video from the #2 politician on the list, Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, shows that he too, did an effective job of targeting the voters in his state - even though the video went viral nationally.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more YouTube and Google video and trends data, during our special Election Night coverage with CBS News.

Handy tools to help Americans vote

Monday, November 1, 2010

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

As Americans gear up for the midterm elections on November 2, we wanted to share a few tools that make it easier to gather voting information.

When you search on Google for [polling place] or [where to vote], you’ll see a search box to help you find your polling place, candidates, and local election office. Just type in the home address where you’re registered to vote. The search looks like this:

This feature is powered by the Google Election Center, an experimental service that lets election officials provide data directly to Google in order to create a set of search tools. Anyone with a website can also provide this same functionality by embedding the open source Election Center gadget on your site, or use the gadget code or API to build your own.

And you don’t need to be at your computer to easily find this information. If you’d rather get it on your mobile device, we’ve also created a mobile landing page: m.google.com/elections.

As for election news, you’ll find a special Google News section with stories for each state so you can easily catch up on the latest headlines.

We hope all of these tools help you get and stay informed throughout the election season.

Posted by Dan Berlin, Public Sector Engineering Manager

Discussing innovation & democracy

Saturday, September 25, 2010

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Over the past few U.S. election cycles, Google and YouTube have have become catalysts for a more engaging, meaningful dialogue between citizens and government leaders. From asking questions of candidates to finding your polling place, our tools are helping to make elections and politics more personal and more democratic, and have opened up Washington, D.C. in exciting new ways.

With less than six weeks until the midterm elections, we wanted to hear from some of politics’ most creative minds about what innovation and democracy mean in 2010. So on Monday we’re joining forces with POLITICO to host an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where we’ll discuss the increasing contributions of technology to democracy and the political process.

As part of the event David Axelrod and Ed Gillespie will answer questions and offer thoughts and predictions about the upcoming elections. Arianna Huffington will then moderate a panel about innovation in media, and will be joined by Becki Donatelli, Stephen Hayes, Nate Silverand Amy Walter. We’ll also demonstrate tools built for citizens and government officials using YouTube and Google Maps, and will be joined by our friends on the politics team at Facebook.

The panelists want to hear from you, so if you’d like to submit a question for any of them, you can do so at youtube.com/citizentube. You’ll also be able to watch the entire event live on YouTube on Monday.

As we approach the election homestretch, we’ll continue to develop useful ways for voters and campaigns to engage one another around the important issues in 2010.

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Elections and Public Sector Programs

Helping Campaigns Get Online Faster

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Thought experiment: You're running a campaign. You've seen the recent studies confirming that online ads move poll numbers, and you're pretty sure you need to start engaging and persuading people online. But as election day looms ever closer, you're not sure how you can do this effectively and efficiently.

Well, good news! Today, we're excited to launch a new tool that makes it easier than ever to leverage the power of Google to reach voters.

The AdWords Campaign Starter Kit does the hard work of building an online advertising campaign for you. You enter a few basic pieces of information about your candidate, select which issues the candidate is running on, and the Starter Kit automatically builds you an AdWords account so you can start connecting with voters online in less than an hour.

We're also pleased to premiere a revamped Google Political Campaign Toolkit site. Learn how online leaders like the Scott Brown for US Senate campaign and the SEIU have leveraged Google's tools to engage with voters. And see what well-run online campaigns are doing to engage voters and win in November.

Posted by Evan Rowe, Elections and Issue Advocacy Team

Information for Maryland Voters

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

If you're registered to vote in Maryland, there's a good chance you know that today is primary election day. If you're heading to the polls, you can use our Google Election Center app to find your polling place and get directions.

The app uses polling place information from the Maryland Board of Elections, contributed as part of the Voting Information Project.

This fall, we hope that all fifty states will make their polling place data available so that engineers like us can build more and better apps!

Posted by Dan Berlin, Public Sector Engineering Manager

Transparency, productivity and innovation - powered by Google

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Google supports government innovation with easy-to-use solutions that promote transparency and boost employee productivity, freeing up time to focus on your critical mission of serving the public. Google helps you:

Scale to meet even the largest challenge.

Deliver solutions quickly.

Reduce costs.

If you're attending the Gov 2.0 Summit, stop by our booth to learn more.

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Federal Enterprise

Collect audience input with Google Sites & Moderator

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Google Docs Blog

Google Moderator helps anyone find the best input from their audiences, whether it’s suggestions on how tostop the oil spill, debate questions at the Copenhagen climate change conference, or questions for Katy Perry. Starting today, you can use Moderator inside your Google Sites as well. For example, if you have a restaurant site, you can embed Google Moderator on your suggestions page to get input from your restaurant patrons. Here’s how:

1. Create a series at Google Moderator.

2. Start editing a page in your Google Site, and go to Insert and then More gadgets. Click on Featured and select Google Moderator at the bottom.

3. Click Select and then you’ll see the settings screen below. Copy and paste the URL from the series you created into the Moderator URL box, and make sure to check the Include a scrollbar on gadget when necessary option.

4. Click OK, save the page, and you’re all set! Your visitors will be able to start submitting and voting on suggestions immediately.

If you want to learn more about Google Moderator, check out the Google Public Sector Blog. You can also embed Moderator on other web sites, your YouTube channel or in your own applications with our API.

Posted by Eric Hysen, Software Engineering Intern

Inform, engage and mobilize voters with YouTube and Google Campaign Toolkits

Thursday, June 3, 2010

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)
It’s no secret that any successful 21st century political campaign must have a robust online strategy to succeed. But elected officials and candidates need more than just a website and a YouTube channel to engage voters: from President Obama’s YouTube interview to Senator Scott Brown’s campaign team’s use of Google Docs to Congressman Scott Murphy’s “Google blast” ad strategy, we’re seeing politicians use more and more of our products and platforms to interact with voters, share information and keep their campaigns organized.

We want to do our part to make sure candidates and campaigns have the tools to stay close to voters, who now expect to hear and see much more from their elected officials than ever before. So today, we’re launching YouTube’s You Choose 2010 Campaign Toolkit and a new and improved Google Campaign Toolkit. Both help candidates make their organizations more effective and deliver their messages more directly. On YouTube, campaigns will have access to features like a Politician channel (which allows campaigns to brand their channel and upload longer videos), Google Moderator, our free analytics tool YouTube Insight, and information about running paid advertising campaigns—using formats like in-stream ads andPromoted Videos—to reach viewers with political ads, just like on TV. And our Google toolkit demonstrates how Google Apps can keep staff and volunteers connected, how search ads can grow your email list and provides other helpful tools.

We hope campaigns in both national and local contests will use these toolkits to engage and inform voters on important issues in 2010. As access to information online is increasingly important in elections, we’re pleased to continue developing useful tools for voters and candidates.

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Public Sector Programs

Politics and Elections Blog

Online ads in 2010: Electoral Trends Beyond Wins and Losses

Searching across the campaign trail

The 2010 election on YouTube: By the numbers

Handy tools to help Americans vote

Discussing innovation & democracy

Helping Campaigns Get Online Faster

Information for Maryland Voters

Transparency, productivity and innovation - powered by Google

Collect audience input with Google Sites & Moderator

Inform, engage and mobilize voters with YouTube and Google Campaign Toolkits

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