Voters Are Searching But Candidates Aren’t Responding: Google & Yahoo Political Paid Search Advertising by ’08 U.S. Presidential Campaigns

PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH SEVERELY UNDERUTILIZED BY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

Voters Are Searching For Candidates On Google & Yahoo But Majority of Campaigns Not Responding

With the 2008 presidential election just 12 months away, the Rimm-Kaufman Group today released initial results from Search and Politics ’08. This study, part of an ongoing series on paid search advertising in the U.S. electoral process, is available online at rkg-search-and-politics-2008.pdf

The Rimm-Kaufman Group analyzed paid search ads placed by presidential campaigns on over 25,000 Google and 25,000 Yahoo searches since February, 2007. Pay-per-click was predicted to play a significant role in presidential advertising for the first time in ‘08. Despite widespread use of search by voters researching candidates, campaigns have yet to respond.

Highlights of the 33 page report include:

  • Less than half of 2008 presidential contenders are using paid search advertising. While businesses have discovered the effectiveness of paid search, many U.S. presidential campaigns have not. Less than half (44%) of the major presidential campaigns ran search advertising on their candidate’s names on Google and Yahoo in October. Even fewer are advertising searches related to key campaign issues.
  • More Republicans are using paid search advertising than Democrats. 5 of the 8 major Republican candidates are running ads, versus 2 of the 8 major Democratic candidates. Republican candidates have run more than 3 times as many ads as Democrats.
  • Google (YouTube) is a major advertiser on political queries. YouTube, Google’s video sharing site, is the most prevalent advertiser in the study, occurring on 11.5% of political queries over the period.
  • The mud-slinging has not yet begun. To date, negative advertising is virtually non-existent, with only 0.11% of the searches (27 out of 25,610) in the study returning negative messages.
  • Political campaigns lack sophistication as paid search advertisers. Presidential campaigns do not appear to be using best practices for search advertising, techniques widely adopted by online retailers. These techniques include tracking conversions and cost, optimizing bids, and testing copy and landing pages.

About The Rimm-Kaufman Group: The Rimm-Kaufman Group LLC is a online marketing agency based in Charlottesville, Virginia. We help major online retailers run large-scale pay-per-click search marketing campaigns effectively. We provide web effectiveness consulting to help clients better convert their website traffic. Reach us online at www.rimmkaufman.com, or call us at 434.970.1010.

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